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Non-members: $75 (3 hours)
The ATCMA would like to hear from members of our profession in regards to the governments proposal to amalgamate 11 Colleges into one regulatory College that would oversee all professions.
Inter-professional expertise and practice standards would be maintained by sub-committees made up of industry experts. More information can be found here; engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/sites/578/2019/11/Modernizing-health-profession-regulatory-framework...
Please once you are informed, provide us with your feedback so that we may prepare a response to the government that reflects the opinions of members of our profession. Feel free to leave a comment below to begin discussion or send us a direct private message.
It seems like there is the proposal the decrease board size to 12 or less members and have 50% of the board public, which would mean there is a chance that there would be no professional representation from an acupuncturist/TCM professional with 11 colleges involved. Is my understanding on that correct?
Since the sub-committee will oversee the practice standards. What are the responsibilities of the board members?
Considering the skeptic communities ability to influence policy and evidence based medicine it seems the evidence for TCM is often ignored. Many studies are small sample sizes as a common critisism. For acupunture and TCM and as we know the science has always been hard to do because of various issues. The main one being that true placebo sham acupunture is hard to create. For the reasons of evidence it is easy to convince medical establishment people we are all just quacks. Having worked for Vancouver coastal Health we have always with new managers had to have a campaign of awareness and edcucation to avoid cutting our acupunture programs. We are always on the first budget cut agenda. Clients depending on us barely saved the day many times. Recently a new manager with no acupunture knowledge mandated only 5 point ear NADA protocol and no TCM at all after 20 years of success. If it was not for clients complaining acupunture would have been cut altogether. I would ask yourself what does a typical univeristy educated science minded person think of acupunture and TCM. Most feel the herbs are responsible for rare species extinction and acupunture is not well supported by science. In addition we see other professions also doing TCM practices I am not hopeful in the future of our profession at times. However we seem to thrive despite the odds. Good results and pristine safety seem to still allow for a busy practice. Our patients are our greatest resource I think. The other important aspect is it is a living cultural art that needs to be preserved as a practice. I do not mention the actual benefits because we are all aware we are effective and have benefitted many people where they had no where else to turn. Also I do not mention injections but I feel this tactile skill we have makes acupunturists superior in safety and effectiveness for any needle based therapy.
I am trying to wrap my head around what could affect our TCM professions if governed by a board that is not familiar with our practices. Would the scope of practice be restricted? Would it impact the modalities we used to treat patients? How would it cause conflict with other 14 professions that merged with our profession?
I would suggest that each profession has one elected board member avoid bias against certain profession in the college.
