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Competency vs. Hours

I have long desired to see the standards for massage therapy education raised in my state and across the nation. Here in North Carolina, the requirement is only 500 hours. That varies in the US, from the unregulated states that have no requirements at all, to the 1000 hours required by New York, Nebraska, and Puerto Rico. The rest fall somewhere in between.

Our neighbors to the north in Canada have a few provinces that are unregulated, but those that are regulated have a much higher hour requirement than the norm here in the US. However, in looking over their documents pertaining to their regulations, I see that it is not really about the number of hours; it is about the basic competencies that they have set forth for an entry-level massage therapist, and I must say that I find it quite impressive. You can read those here.

I imagine that the higher number of hours is merely a by-product of the competencies that are required. It would take a lot more than 500 hours to pack all those competencies in. And I couldn’t find any fault with any of them. It actually bears a lot of similarities to our recent document, the Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge. That’s not a perfect document; it’s just a start on defining what an entry-level therapist should know here. I’ve heard a good many complaints about it. In fairness to the dedicated volunteers who gave of their time and expertise to work on it, they offered a long period for comments from the profession, and I was personally appalled at how few they got. I think they got about 600 or so, and about 50 of them were mine. It was also very telling to me that when our Board sent out a survey to the approximately 40 school owners and program directors recently about raising the standards, only 7 of them bothered to reply. There is a big lack of interest in raising the bar.

The complacency here is staggering, and people just tend to complain after the fact instead of offering input on the front end. It’s the same thing I’ve seen over and over again when it comes to detrimental legislation in our profession; a few dedicated people will contact their legislators before something awful gets passed into law, and the rest will just gripe about it after it happens. That’s another blog, and one that I’ve written several times.

I’ve actually been pushing for our Board to raise educational standards, which like anything a public board is considering gets passed along to a committee for study. It is unfortunate that we could not find any concrete evidence that requiring more hours leads to better test scores. Then again, is that what it’s all about? The ability to pass a test? In our paradigm, yes, it is. We are lacking here in measuring competency in any other way.READ MORE...

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Comment by Matthew D. Stewart on February 21, 2011 at 12:30pm

Laura,

I'm so glad that you raised this point again. It got lost in that previous debacle of a thread last week

NY, Nebraska and PR all require 1000 hours, and the rest are below that. ….. The FSMTB would like to promote portability, but the states that have better requirements are not going to dumb it down for the rest of them. Laura Allen

Indeed, as you point out the emphasis is on competencies in the Canadian documents. That is the way it should be; hours are just a by-product of the work and effort required to reach the agreed level. Teaching to competency standards is much easier as the goal is defined, for teacher and student.

And as a side note, it was mentioned elsewhere that only 31% of Canada is regulated. I think that is based on dividing the number of regulated provinces by the total number of provinces and territories, which is far too simplistic to be a useful metric. If the population of regulated jurisdictions is compared with unregulated jurisdictions then we arrive at the following:

Ontario 13,210,667
British Columbia 4,530,960
Newfoundland and Labrador 509,739

Total regulated population 18,251,366
total Canadian population 34,108,752
54% of the Canadian population is served by regulated Massage Therapists.

The glass is more than half full!

References

"Population estimates, age distribution and median age as of July 1, 2010, Canada, provinces and territories". Statistics Canada" Retrieved 21 Feb 2011 from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/100929/t100929b3-eng.htm

Comment by Las Vegas Massage In Summerlin on February 20, 2011 at 10:50am: ~

First, great post Laura!

I'd like to put a little different spin on this. This is in regards to Laura's comment about raising the bar. What does most everyone do when they read about raising the bar or advanced certifications and such? WIIFM. "What's in it for me?" Imho this responsibility falls on both parties; those that are working to raise the bar (in whatever it is they are attempting to do,) and the individual massage therapist.

For those working on raising the bar, make the objectives clear. "If you do this, get this certification or are now required to obtain 1,000 hours of schooling to graduate, then here are all the possibilities for you." Also, each individual therapist must ask themselves this question as well. "If I do this, what's in it for me or my clients? How can I make best use of this?"

From my own persepctive, I see many programs or courses or whatever that don't dig far enough; providing meaningful value to me. I just say, "So?" Or I'll say, "So what?" I see some advanced certification or those who now want to raise the basic level to, let's say, 1,000 hours. Again, "So what? I'm already certified and licensed so I may not give a hoot about those now attending school, and those touting this advanced certification have not stated their case well enough to answer my question of, what's in it for me?" Sure, raising the bar for the entire industry may be a good thing, but I see a disconnect in those that wish to raise the bar and the individual therapists saying, "What's in it for me?"

My favorite example is this: A thief steal your neighbors car. Yea, that sucks, but how concerned are you really? Someone steal your car, now it's very concerning and personal. ;) There's much more too this, but that's enough for now. Hopefully the point was made above.

Kris

Comment by Daniel Cohen on February 20, 2011 at 10:10am: Ezekiel I was certified and licensed in 1999. I have accumulated over 1400 hours. So we have similar drive, I believe. Hours are used because competence in touch is so difficult to rank. Is it accurate? I don't believe so. I have had massages with people that have no formal training. They grew up learning the families traditional massage. Others have had over 1000 hours and deliver a very mechanical massage. There are those that do only Reflexology with only 100 hours of such training.

We are a mixed kettle of fish. We all have our roles in this profession. Let's hope no MT is left out in this Brave New World. We help people with their lives. To me the issue of competency is simply to assure we do no harm. Basic competency and hours should not prevent anyone from finding their place in this glorious profession.