Chip Hines's Blog (15)

Its a tremendously exciting time! This Saturday (May 15, 2010) we will be announcing the release of the inaugural Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge (MTBOK) at the "Highlighting Massage Therapy in CIM" conference in Seattle, WA. Its been over a year since I started on the project, and the MTBOK itself took almost 11 months to build after the MTBOK task force began their work.



The task force has done an extraordinary job on this effort, and has spent many, many hours researching,… Continue

We have just released the 2nd draft of the MTBOK as scheduled, and its available to download at http://www.mtbok.org along with a brief press release.



I hope you will go to the site, download the document, read it and provide us with your comments (a link to our online comment form is on the site and on the first page of the MTBOK document).



We will hold a formal comment period open until March 8, 2010. In my opinion this is the most… Continue

We are just around the corner from starting the e-presses and pushing out the 2nd draft of the MTBOK, and its a busy week! On friday the new draft will go up on the MTBOK website (http://www.mtbok.org) as an Adobe Acrobat file available for download. We are putting up a new link to a comment form so that we can get your suggestions, updates and recommendations.



As before, the comment form has a couple of questions about who your are or represent… Continue

The MTBOK Task Force has been working away on the second draft which will be released for public comment at the end of January, 2010. We received almost 600 comments on the document after the first draft was released on September 15, 2009, and we have been going through the document reading the comments received, agreeing on what action should take place and making the changes.



We have also added some new content, moved things around where necessary and dropped some items. I think… Continue

(Originally published on the MTBOK Project Manager's Blog at www.mtbok.blogspot.com)



After reviewing a lot of comments regarding Polarity Therapy and the MTBOK, I believe most of the issues relate to a mis-interpretation of the MTBOK itself, its impact, and the intent. We have made some changes which we hope will resolve the concerns, and offer the following additional information:



Impact and Intent: The MTBOK is “just” a… Continue

(Originally published on the MTBOK Project Managers blog at: http://mtbok.blogspot.com/)



You may know that on Thursday, September 24th we held an MTBOK Stakeholder Input Session open to the public in Orlando, FL. We filled a double room, and representatives from all of the MTBOK Steward organizations (AMTA, ABMP, AMTA COS, FSMTB, MTF, and NCBTMB) were present including ABMP's own Les Sweeney.



The idea of holding ad open to the public meeting at the AMTA convention site… Continue

(Originally published on the MTBOK Project Managers blog at: http://mtbok.blogspot.com/)



Im pleased that we've begun to get responses already on the draft MTBOK, and its just what we are hoping for. Its also clear that the respondants are passionate about the profession, and have given thought to their responses.



As a task force of 8 trying to represent such a broad complex profession, we think its vital that we get feedback from the community. Thats why we have tried to… Continue

Today we released the first draft of the MTBOK content. Its in a downloadable pdf document available at http://www.mtbok.org. Our press release is also available there.





The most important thing to keep in mind is that the MTBOK is intended to be by and for our community, and we want to hear what you think and hope you will provide us with focused comments.





Because there are lots of potential comment-ors out there, and only 8 n the Task Force, we developed an… Continue

In case you'd like the flyer for our September 24th Stakeholder input session, you can download it here: http://www.mtbok.org/downloads/MTBOK_Flyer_9_20091.pdf



By the Way, in case anyone isnt clear about who our "Stakeholders" are, it is anyone who is involved in Massage Therapy: practitioners, schools and educators, businesses, associations, allied health care professionals etc... so if you are reading this, you most likely are one!



While this session is a great… Continue

One clarification about the upcoming session we are holding in Orlando, FL on September 24th from 4-5pm - You DONT have to be an AMTA member, or even attending the convention to participate.

...but you do have to come...

on http://mtbok.blogspot.com

I do hate to ask you to exit this beautiful site though!

You may have noticed my absence for a couple of weeks, and I'm sorry about that. I don't expect it to continue. Right now the MTBOK Task Force is keeping themselves, and me, quite busy.



As you may know, we are working to create Phase 1 of the first Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge (MTBOK) created by and for the Massage Therapy community. Although the content we develop is independent, we are sponsored by six "Steward" organizations who have pooled their resources and joined to get… Continue

Three weeks into the project and the Task Force is hard at work, and keeping me busy as well! You may recall that the first phase of the MTBOK development is addressing only the foundational elements. The task force is charged with developing a fully vetted (reviewed, commented upon by the stakeholders and updated to include resulting changes) MTBOK which contains the following:



- The Scope of Practice

- A description of the field

- the competencies of an entry level… Continue

Early July is the right time to talk about independence, at least in this country - don't you think?



You have read some about the fact that the MTBOK is sponsored by six organizations well known to the profession (see the previous post with our Press Release.) In a later post I will talk a little about the many other related organizations who we will continue to include in our goal to be as inclusive as possible while we build the MTBOK. But today I wanted to say a little about the… Continue

Hello all! My name is Chip Hines, and I'm the Project Manager for the Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge (MTBOK) Project. Im tremendously excited by this work which puts me in the middle of something that I think will provide great value to the Massage Therapy profession. At the same time, I get to work with a group of very talented and energetic folks who are creating the ground work for the project - a Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge.



A great deal of background work has brought us… Continue