The development of first professional doctorate degrees in Chinese medicine
I must confess that the issue of accreditation of programs, levels of education within the acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine profession(s) and all related issues sometimes evade my understanding. While the degree that I will get at the end of my training is a Masters of Science in Oriental Medicine, I will obtain a certification that will give me the title of Licensed Acupuncturists (LAc). At this point, further education is possible in accredited DAOM (Doctorate in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine) but it brings with it no further licensure benefits. At this point, all Doctorate programs require the student to have their Masters degree and have some amount of clinical experience before they are considered for entry. The standards vary as to how much clinical experience is required. The Doctorate is clinically based and generally requires some amount of clinical research to be done.
NCNM, the school I attend in Portland, OR, has been working to create a first professional doctoral degree that focuses on Classical Chinese Medicine. I’m unclear as to whether other schools are seeking something similar. It’s been a long road, one that was started down long before I came to the school. Students, faculty, staff and community practitioners have been involved in the creation and refinement of the program. Most of the students currently in the MSOM program had high hopes that ACAOM (the Chinese medicine accreditation organization) would create a set of standards for first professional doctorates in time for us to complete our “first professional doctorates.” To that end, we have been taking the extra coursework necessary for our proposed Doctorate program. Some of us have been quite active in the process, attending committee meetings and submitting comments to the ACAOM in support of a certain set of standards.
On February 8, ACAOM released their recommendation - which is essentially that they feel they can make no recommendation because of lack of consensus in the community. If you would like to read the official document, read it at ACAOM’s website. I’m unclear what, exactly, this means for our program at NCNM. Almost certainly those of us in our third or fourth year that were hoping to graduate on time with our Doctorate will not be able to do so. That’s not my biggest concern - I’m simply interested in understanding what the essential disagreement is in the community.
So, I would like to hear from my readers. What is your stance on First Professional Doctorates? What do you feel needs to be in place before a program like that goes through? Do you have other thoughts about how education and licensing works in the Chinese medicine profession in the United States? Let us know in the comments.
Eric
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Tags: acaom, Acupuncture, chinese-herb, classical-chinese-medicine, doctorate program, education, licensed acupuncturists, licensing, ncnm, organization, professional doctorates, students
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5 Responses to “The development of first professional doctorate degrees in Chinese medicine”
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Back when I was in school and they were talking about the doctorate (almost a decade now) it was explained that we would follow the path of social workers, in that the Masters level candidate would be the worker bee and the Doctoral level candidate would be the teacher.
I don’t know what the arguments are in standards and who is blocking or what. If we offer Master’s level programs that are basic programs for practitioners, then the doctoral level should require something beyond that. As the original supposition is that these would be teachers, five years (as is standard in Oregon to supervise) seems a reasonable amount of time to have practiced before going for a doctorate.
I can make a lot of arguments for or against what ought to be studied. Right now none of the existing doctoral programs really look as if there is anything worth studying in them. OCOM’s is all over the place. Bastyr’s looks good on paper but the students I have talked to have some things are lacking in the implementation.
I’d like to really learn and discuss those little things we sort of gloss over at the master’s level.
As for setting a consensus, I have no problem with that. There are few issues I’d feel strongly about so long as I can continue to practice at the level I am at until I find a program that suits me–and the money to go on to the program if I choose that path.
I’m in Australia so don’t know the American scene.
I’m told there is a Japanese proverb: listen to the words, and watch the direction of the feet! The rhetoric and arguments are most often in service of vested interests.
I think the usual understanding of education is wrong. Theory is the reflection on experience, not its beginning point. Doctorates and the rest are usually based on this flawed model. That research prepares one to teach is usually quickly falsified by the experience of those at university. Teaching is a separate skill.
Witht he Ph.D. paradigm it is very difficult to do anything worthwhile as a piece of higher study. The colleges can do something about this and I hope they do.
You will likely find that in the field there are a couple of established positions and their adherents who are blocking the process. Winning an argument won’t help.
In my experience students and clients can come to agreement on what is desirable quite rapidly (clinincal efficacy, practitioners ability to related to people as a human being etc), the blockage comes at the institutional and bureaucratic level.
Personally I think the academic is a huge waste of time and resources. A professional doctorate could be of huge benefit if it helped people describe and improve their practice. But this is a big ask. There are other examples of this but they are rare.
I wish you every success is increasing clinical efficacy and healing more people more rapidly. Don’t lose sight of this as the goal in the morass of academia and bureaucracy.
Grace and Peace,
Evan
It is good to see the professional doctorate hopefully this leads to better acceptance of Chinese medicine by the general public.
Regards
Tim
Is work on the CCM doctorate at NCNM continuing? Or has the ACAOM non-resolution halted the process?
Jason : the answer is yes and no. My most recent information indicates that we’re looking more at a PhD and letting the regulatory stuff settle itself out. Our school’s philosophy is really better suited for a PhD anyway…
You might want to ask our Dean for more detailed information on the process as I am not intimately involved with it…
Eric