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MTBOK 2nd Draft Being Prepared

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 the Body of Knowledge has gotten much better and has benefited from the comments provided to us. I wish we could respond individually to all of you and let you know the specific actions we have taken on your comments, but it just isnt possible given a small, part-time, volunteer Task Force membership. Please know that every comment has been reviewed and discussed by the task force and we have taken the appropriate action.

The next draft will be the final one which we will open for public comment, after which we will create and "publish" the final Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge... at least for this go-around. The idea is that the MTBOK will be a living document, created by and for the massage therapy profession and evolving over time to represent the information that is up to date and relevant for massage therapists.

I hope you will stay interested, read and comment on the next draft - that will only make the end product better.

Thanks!

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Comment by Chip Hines on January 19, 2010 at 4:28pm: Mike:

Our hope was to meet with all the schools organizations. We will definately meet with AMTA, are hoping to work things out to get to the ABMP meeting, and are scheduled to be at the Alliance meeting in June (but this doesnt occur until after the document is first published). Keep in mind that the MTBOK will be a "living" document and can be changed as necessary. Of course we want to get it in the best, most representative shape possible before we do our final publication.

Comment by Mike Hinkle on January 19, 2010 at 9:46am: Chip:

Thanks for the heads-up. I hope the group will expand a little bit on your efforts to gain knowledge about those KSA's. I hope you will contact the schools that are participating in the 14th Annual ABMP School Issue's Forum or the one's from last year, even if you do a mailing, so there is more than just the schools at the AMTA meeting for that input. I see you are a member of the ABMP group here and it may play well to have a discussion thread there as soon as possible.

A lot of discussion still ahead! I will try to make it to Seattle, but that's about a month out from the Festival and we'll be pretty busy!

Comment by Chip Hines on January 19, 2010 at 9:22am: Oh, and I will be at the Highlighting Conference In Seattle in May. In fact it looks like the full task force will be there with the exception of Susan Salvo who will not be able to make it. We hope to see you there!

Comment by Chip Hines on January 19, 2010 at 9:20am: Mike:

THe formal comment period will be open for just a month so that we can start the push for the "final" document which will be delivered in early May.
We want to get the comments in fairly quickly so we can be responsive in the final document, but Im hoping that things will work out as they did for the 2nd draft. Our formal comment period ended after about 45 days but we were still able to take into account comments sent in early January.
We have two areas that we already know we will work on - the Terminology section will be getting more work and we will be continuing to evaluate the level of Knowledge, Skills and Abilities specified. On that note, we have heard from some schools that the level is appropriate and in line with what is being taught. We will be meeting with some of the school organizations (the first being the AMTA schools summit in St Petersbury, FL) and hope to get more feedback from them. In the meantime we are paying attention to the comments we have heard from some that we are specifying too much.

Comment by Chip Hines on December 19, 2009 at 10:27am: Chris - We started categorizing, but I havent kept it up because it seemed very subjective, and because we were addressing comments by line number. I do have some formal statistics which I will see if I can share here, and I will review the comments again and give my sense of the major themes on this blog. I can tell you some of the things Ive noted though. The biggest block of comments, perhaps as much as a third, were from the certified energy practitioners. There was a range of comments, but in general they wanted us to remove all references to energy work, and specifically cited some places in the document where change was needed. After deliberation, we largely agreed with their specific comments. We do believe that energy work itself is in the scope of massage therapy, so we left it in the scope section, but agreed that training and/or certification in addition to entry-level knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA) are necessary, so we cut most of that information out (the MTBOK addresses only KSAs for the entry level massage therapist).

There were a lot of specific comments about the content itself - suggestions, recommended additions and deletions by line number, as well as general comments about the content and organization.

One other theme in some of the comments has caused a lot of internal discussion, thought and some discussion with stake holders. We received comments that the amount of knowledge required of an entry level therapist as contained in the first draft is too much. This issue is fairly complex, and I think I will write a separate blog about it so as to not make this response too long. Suffice it to say that we have heard the issue, have worked on it, and made adjustments to the content based on it, and in our final walk through of the current draft we are including this as something to watch out for. More on this in the next blog. Then I will push through the comments and see if I can get out a better sense of what comments we have received.

Comment by Christopher A. Moyer on December 18, 2009 at 9:48am: Six hundred comments! Whew, you folks had (and have) your work cut out for you.

I echo Laura's sentiments regarding the Task Force's hard work.

Might you be able to summarize, even very briefly, what the most frequent concerns were amongst the 600 comments? I'm curious to know about the top two or three, if possible.

Comment by Chip Hines on December 18, 2009 at 7:09am: Sorry about that ... its actually both - the second draft is also the final draft (at least for the initial effort). After that, the MTBOK will be published in early May and move into go into its "living" phase of periodic updating and management. Essentially we planned 2 rounds of public comment before it is "published."

Comment by Darcy Neibaur on December 17, 2009 at 1:39pm: Now I am confused. Is the second draft or the final draft being released 1-29-2010.

Comment by Chip Hines on December 17, 2009 at 11:49am: Thanks for the comments, I will be sure the task force hears about them. As Laura says, Im sure that we wont make everybody happy, but the Task Force is really putting their thoughts and effort into doing what they think will best serve the profession.

Its also best to remember that this will not be a static document - the whole concept is that it will change and update over time, so if something needs to be fixed, there will be a process to address it, and those who have real concerns will not only be able to send in comments but can consider volunteering to work on it themselves!

Regarding Mikes questions, we will be having a shorter public comment period but it will still be at least a month. Right now we plan on issuing the final draft on 1/29/2010 and having a 1 month comment period. The commenting process wont change.

The whole task force (at least as of now) will be at the Highlighting Conference in Seattle in May. We will have the opportunity to present and will follow with a short Question and Answer period. While the final arrangements haven't been made yet, we hope to be able to continue any Q&As after the session in another area - no promises though... its too early to commit.

Comment by Laura Allen on December 17, 2009 at 4:52am: Thanks, Chip. I am following and spreading the word!

You can't please all the people all the time, and I'm sure you personally have to have a thick skin. Whether I ultimately end up agreeing with everything that's on (or not on) the document, I applaud you and the rest of the team for the huge effort you have undertaken. Thank you and the rest for all your work.