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There’s still time to register for FLOW Symposium 2023, hosted by Eastern Currents!

Visit the ATCMA booth at FLOW from March 24-26 for daily draws, discounts on new memberships and renewals, and much more. See you there!

Flow Symposium 2023 – March 24-26 at the Vancouver Holiday Inn

As we return to live, in person events Eastern Currents is excited to bring back our Facilitating Life and Optimizing Wellness Symposium (FLOW). This year we are bringing back two very popular speakers to inspire your practice and deepen your clinical acumen!  We will be hosting this three day event in the very convenient Holiday Inn on Broadway and Laurel. We have arranged some great hotel pricing for the event (considering how expensive Vancouver is) so if you are out of town and want to visit beautiful Vancouver in the Spring and get your CEUs before the April 1^st deadline, this is your opportunity. For local practitioners this a great chance to re-connect in person with many of your colleagues in a fun, inspiring and empowering way.

Day 1 – Dr. Sonia Tan – Holographic Acupuncture

For more info click here:

https://www.easterncurrents.ca/store/products/live-event-flow-symposium-2023-day-1-in-person/

Days 2 and 3 – Master Jeffrey Yuen – Emotional Scars (10 CEUs) and Qi Gong 6 Healing Sounds – (3 CEUs)

For more info click here:

https://www.easterncurrents.ca/store/products/live-event-flow-symposium-2023-day-23-in-person/

ATCMA Co-Presidents’ Update | ATCMA联合主席的最新情况

Greetings to all ATCMA members! We, the Co-Presidents of the ATCMA are pleased to introduce ourselves and our fellow ATCMA board members to you.

Your Board for 2023 is:

Di Wu，R.TCM.P
Co-President
Education Committee member
Membership Committee member

Chris Vallee, Dr.TCM
Co-President
Marketing Committee member
Government and Regulator Relations Committee member
Outreach and Special Projects Committee member

Sarah Jenkins，R.TCM.P
Vice-President
Government and Regulator Relations Committee Chair (replacing the Scope Committee)
Outreach and Special Projects Committee Chair
Education Committee member
Marketing Committee member
Finance Committee member

Clayton Willoughby, R.Ac
Secretary
Membership Committee Chair

Melissa Carr, Dr.TCM
Treasurer
Finance Committee Chair

Ian Dunsmuir, R.Ac
Insurance Committee Chair

Sarabjit Romana, R.TCM.P
Director at Large
Membership Committee member
Marketing Committee member
Finance Committee member
Wei Wei (Wendy) Yang, R.Ac
Director at Large
Membership Committee member
Marketing Committee member

Our board has a great balance of knowledge and passion to contribute to their work on our professional association. We all bring unique strengths to the board team to ensure that we can reach the goals we have set for the year. We Encourage YOU, our members, to reach out with your ideas and let us know how you can help us and your fellow members reach our project goals.

The ATCMA has achieved significant progress thanks to the hard work of our former board members, but we still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do, particularly when it comes to uniting the voice of our profession. To achieve this, we, the directors, will make even greater efforts this year. Here are some of the specific actions we will undertake to promote the development of the ATCMA and bring even greater benefits to our members.

Strengthening communication and collaborating with our TCM colleagues who are working for the common goal of promoting TCM in BC. To kick off the year, we as Co-Presidents participated in the Chinese New Year parade with the Home of TCM BC. We shared in the celebration of our medicine, promoting our passion to help our patients with one of the oldest medicines in the world. Working with our TCM siblings for the good of our profession. We need to work together to promote a medicine that has so many benefits to offer to our current medical system. One of the ideas we shared was working together to increase the public’s understanding of TCM and Acupuncture. We all wonder why people seem to know of IMS or Dry Needling but not really TCM, when these modern needling techniques were born of acupuncture. Using language that is already being used in our communities will help us bridge the gap between East and West Medicine. This is something that we can all work on as TCM professionals and something that other associations agree to work on with us.

Building a united voice for TCM and acupuncture in BC by registering as many new members as possible to join the ATCMA. There are many associations with special interests in our province, most of which focus on sharing specific techniques or providing education to their members. We are often surprised that practitioners who have been in the field for many years (not to mention the newcomers) are unaware of all the ATCMA does. Some even confuse us with other associations. The ATCMA is a true guild, and a professional platform that advocates for the profession by communicating with government, our regulatory college, fellow healthcare profession associations, insurance companies and the public. We need to grow our voice, and now more than ever, we need a UNITED VOICE for TCM and acupuncture. This will become even more critical as our provincial regulations change and we are amalgamated with other regulatory colleges. No matter what language we speak and where we were educated, let’s unite together to be more powerful. We need a strong, unified TCM and Acupuncture association to protect the interests of the profession, ensure that our rights are respected, continue to evolve our tools to help our patients and create profitable thriving businesses.
Reaching out to students to engage them in the TCM and Acupuncture profession beyond their classes and textbooks. We plan to increase our contact with TCM schools in BC to help future practitioners understand the benefits and assistance that ATCMA can provide throughout their careers. Students are the future of our profession and we want them to have a say in its direction.

Improving tangible benefits to our members, by building on our existing wins like continually expanding coverage of acupuncture services by extended health insurance providers. We regularly communicate with ICBC to ensure a more stable position for acupuncture services in MVA claims. ATCMA members have exclusive access to ICBC through our Insurance Committee, which helps resolve unwarranted treatment plan rejections on behalf of members. In addition to discounted liability insurance, we are working to secure add-on legal services as well as extended healthcare benefits packages through our insurance partner.

Recruiting speakers and instructors for educational seminars that not only fulfill CEU requirements, but help members grow their business with new techniques or business management skills. We will continue to add to our extensive bank of free online educational seminars and resume in-person seminars this year.

Our newly formed committee on Outreach and Special Projects will continue to advocate for the inclusion of acupuncture in the publicly funded healthcare system, push for pay raises for those working in public healthcare settings, support research that can improve the understanding of acupuncture and TCM by insurers and public health officials, and

Continue to communicate about changes in the regulatory environment with our members. We know that the new Health Professions and Occupations Act is confusing and concerning to many of you, and we will not only work with other healthcare professions to ensure that our voice is heard by elected officials, we will help you navigate the changes that will come with the HPOA and amalgamation.

Although our board of directors is strong, we need your help to grow our voice. This year we encourage YOU our members to reach out to colleagues in your area and ask them to join us. We need to support each other to make sure our voice is not only bigger, but that it can be heard above all of the noise. We need a voice in the new healthcare model that will soon be in place; a voice to educate other health care professionals on how we can help them and their patients; a voice in insurance companies like ICBC so that we can be compensated fairly for our treatments. This board is working on solutions, and we need you to engage with us so that we are successful. “It is easier to light a candle than it is to curse the darkness!” If we can all do our part to light the way for our profession, we will continue to have a bright future for TCM in British Columbia.

Chris Vallee, Dr.TCM and Di Wu, R.TCMP

ATCMA Co-Presidents

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ATCMA News – Meet your Board of Directors and join us at FLOW2023! | ATCMA新闻 – 认识你的理事会并加入我们的FLOW2023!