Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge

Comment

Comment by Carl W. Brown on November 12, 2009 at 2:57pm

Mike “Hours are not a measure of knowledge, skill or ability. Is correct, however, hours are how we will measure how much "knowledge, skill or ability" training you will get.” We agree. But the question is “Is the training you get sufficient to impart the knowledge, skills or ability?’.

First we need to determine what is a satisfactory level of each KSA. If we don’t do then we will continue to turn out people who are ill prepared for the business. If the person does not meet this standard then we need to decide if they would learn it if they just had more hours of training, do they need a different type of training, do they need prerequisite training or are they just never going to get it. Only then can you decide that it takes x number of hours to train most people to this task.

Yes hours are important but we need to figure out hours based on how lone it takes to teach each of the essentials to a minim level of competency. This also provide guidance to the schools how to develop their curriculum and how to determine if specific students need extra time and effort to work on things that they may have trouble with. Setting total hours based on a guess is not the guidance this industry needs. Just adding hours does not make better people either because the schools and students still don’t know if they are learning things that are important. Teachers will also vary in what they know and their ability to impart knowledge. Grab someone off the street and have them teach 200 hours of body dynamics.

Students learn differently. I was failing arithmetic becasue of severe learning disabilities so they just gave me more work and I still did not learn. Then in fourth grade I learned logarithms that I used to check my multiplication and division and I started to get better grades. Outside of school I used an abacus I could even do roots on it. My ADD was a distraction and I would forget to carry or make other stupid mistakes. With an abacus the beads remembers everything. By fifth grade I was still bad at arithmetic but a whiz at the study of mathematics.

They also have different backgrounds. With all the outside anatomy training I had, I could have taught anatomy to your 1000 hours students.

The other issue is that we have no idea if we are teaching them the right things. Are we missing an essential part of their training? Does it all hang together? I go a massage form one person who went to a school to learn Swedish. She had enough hours but the teacher spent most of them on reflexology and it showed in her Swedish work.

Comment by rudy m smith on November 12, 2009 at 2:37pm

I would never hire a therapist based on hours and I have twenty five plus years in this business. I will however give each and every person who is seeking to work with me or be associated with me a basic test... I call it the "show me what ya got" test. I don't care how many hours a person has in massage school, how many masters degrees or PHD's or C.E.U's they have, if they don't develop the kinesthetic skills to do therapeutic work in a timely fashion I say "bye bye". Most students come out of school with poor skills past on by poor instructors. Anyone can memorize the text books and anatomy and kinesiology etc... but it's the "hands on" the body skills and problem solving that sepparate the employable from the driftwood. But I'm ranting and I am comparing a new graduate to someone who has advanced certification skills. Apples and oranges. Oh yeah, the advanced certification skills one gets in C.E.U classes rarely require demonstration to prove they actualy know what they are doing. Hmm. I've been here before and I keep getting stuck in the mud.

Comment by Mike Hinkle on November 12, 2009 at 11:30am

Carl,

Anyone wanting to use line item veto to shorten anything can. I can cut what you think is minimal and this person can cut mine. Proves nothing. Your whole concept is to focus this on Swedish as you have in CA for a mininmal start. Sorry Carl, ain't gonna happen. You can try to add bulk to or make it as minimal as you can in your little discussion group.

And your hour argument is just as weak. Few people will enter any program not knowing when they will finish. And yes I do hire MT's solely based on hours. How many hours they can work. Massage Therapy is a learned skill as well as intuitive. I chose a lot of students right out of school. There was only one therapist in four years that did not improve. I looked at the problem inside the industry and said, I will help these students become better therapists, not they aren't good enough for the people that live in this area.

And I disagree about hours, if that's all you are looking at. I would take any 1,000 hour student out of NY, every time before I hired your 100/250 hour graduate from CA. To me, the school is more important. Some do care.

Carl, you will not beat the hour argument. Keep trying! You can annoint every KSA, you want. It will come back to scheduling, as it always does. That Carl is hours.

Hours are not a measure of knowledge, skill or ability. Is correct, however, hours are how we will measure how much "knowledge, skill or ability" training you will get.

Comment by Stephen Jeffrey on November 12, 2009 at 11:26am

Rudy, totally agree with you, to little =bad, to much = bad.
/www.massageprofessionals.com/forum/topics/deep-venous-thrombosos

Comment by Carl W. Brown on November 12, 2009 at 10:42am

Rudy, you are right that asking a doctor if the client can have a massage is a problem because while the doctor knows medicine he does not know massage and its effects. Besides many doctors do not trust any form of alternative medicine. Often they will tell the person to see a PT instead.

My answer of diabetics is to keep hard candy around. If they start getting hypoglycemic most diabetics will know the feeling even without a glycometer. This is something every MT should do.

It is interesting that many times you will hear about AIDS being contraindicated but AIDS is blood borne and if you follow the universal precautions you will be fine. But no one talks about MRSA. If you become a MRSA carrier you can spread it to your clients and then the dilemma of whether you need to give up massage and change carriers especially if you work with the elderly and infirm.

Comment by Carl W. Brown on November 12, 2009 at 10:28am

Mike, the BOK can be simplified. Look at the strawman that I posted. I cut out the non-essential KSAs and started to look at the competencies needed for each KSA. Even my initial take is a better standard that we have now.

As to hours, would you hire an MT solely based on hours? If you need more information as to actual qualifications then it is that information that we need to incorporate to make a standard.

For example I have far fewer hours of anatomy in massage school that most MTs. However outside of massage school I have had 9 other courses, 4 workshops and a college anatomy lab course in anatomy and my type of bodywork is very anatomy intensive so I use that knowledge on a day to day basis and don’t forget it like many MTs.

Hours are not a measure of knowledge, skill or ability. Students and teachers are different and hours are just exposure and don’t demonstrate competence. If we really want to improve competence that is what we need to measure and that is the whole point of a BOK. It sets a standard of competence that we can check our training and students against. When we hire a person we need to check their ability to do the job. If a manager hires an MT solely on hours of training they should be fired.

The question the BOK should answer is that particular person ready to practice? If we only use hours we are just as irresponsible as the manager we just fired.

Comment by rudy m smith on November 12, 2009 at 7:19am

SKIN - we touch it all the time and yet (in most schools) it gets very little attention from the dermatology standpoint. Knowing more about skin and infectious skin conditions would be very important to people who may need to be referred to a dermatologist.

Comment by rudy m smith on November 12, 2009 at 7:16am

Since there are little to no studies regarding massage effects/interactions with certain prescription meds, most doctors would be reluctant to give a massage therapist the go ahead (green light) because of basic cya liability issues.

Comment by rudy m smith on November 12, 2009 at 7:12am

The Drug thing. Lets take insulin dependent diabetics. Maybe they have an insulin pump. A basic LMT SHOULD know that when you massage an area of frequent injections of insulin it will flush more insulin into the body and cause blood suger to drop - sometimes dramatically. So. you have a client check blood sugar before getting on the table and after so they can handle the situation as THEY have been taught as a diabetic. As far as other drugs? It is perhaps wise to teach a basic class on drugs, not to make them experts etc... but just to give them the basic idea that it IS important to know how some medications affect their clients/massage. Too much info = bad. too little info = bad. But it definately needs to be touched upon even if it is a way of giving a therapist a protocol for descision making regarding meds.

Comment by Keith Eric Grant on November 12, 2009 at 2:26am

Bert, I'm in agreement that there's not enough guidelines to place the drug interactions in the BOK. It is enough simply to know which drugs might be problematic, get the potential client to fill out intake forms and sign releases, and check with the clients M.D., if they are medicated with substances requiring clarification. That, of course, also implies a first session could require modification of plans if the input indicates a consult/clarification is needed before certain types of work are done. I think it's enough to have a protocol for handling the situation via consult.But having that protocol is an important bit of knowledge. We also should be very clear what we are including and what we are not including.

On Greg's comment about texts. This is one reason I'm concerned about what is and is not included and about statements that are indeterminate about what they really imply is taught. If a statement is too vague, it can as easily be used to propagate erroneous information into the next generation of text books as it is could be used to clean erroneous material already being taught. Here's an example.

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