The NCBTMB has been recently adding a few specialty certifications. The thing is no one really knows why they are doing this or what they are trying to do.
My complaint when I first saw the specialty certifications was why is it only one school program that is allowed to have the title : Specialty Certificate in Massage Therapy for Integrative Healthcare. Why can’t anyone who has training in integrative health get the specialty certificate? Why can’t anyone with the proper training and knowledge take the test and be qualified? What good is the specialty certificate if no one knows what it means or even cares what it means? Why is it just a specialty certification and not a Board Certification? Inquiring minds want to know…but nothing is coming from the NCBTMB.
There are more specialty certifications popping up now.
That is one of the major issues with the NCBTMB specialty certifications….but…. here’s the thing. The NCBTMB is just doing this to start the process of creating specialty certifications. It is a stepping stone that will allow therapists who want to separate themselves from all of the other therapists out there to show that they have additional training in various specialties.
My other question is – won’t this lead to hundreds of specialty certifications? What will make it special then?
The specialty certifications are just the stepping stone to figure out what to do with all of this.
I am wondering if the specialty certifications are also part of the efforts to revive the massage school enrollments.
The most recent ABMP schools report says that the number of training programs in the US is the lowest it has ever been since 2003. We have the lowest number of graduates coming out of massage school since 1998. (It isn’t only the massage profession that is struggling with finding students to fill their programs though.)
The number of massage therapy training programs in the United States is at its lowest since 2003, and the number of graduates from those programs is the lowest since ABMP began conducting the survey in 1998. ABMP’s biennial census of massage school programs indicates 28,263 students graduated from massage therapy programs in 2016—a drop of nearly 22 percent from 2014’s total of 36,305. The average program graduated just under 26 students per program; this is the lowest recorded average in the history of the census. ABMP Honey the Pie Shrunk (again)
In May 2017, I attended a presentation by Whitney Lowe at WA State Massage Therapy Associations annual meeting where I learned some of the following:
One of the major problems we have in the massage profession is the ‘split personality’. We have two major branches – spa/wellness/personal care/personal services and then Healthcare – Rehabilitation, hospital based massage, clinical massage. There are many jobs in both sectors yet there is one main track of education through the massage schools – fulfill your basic education hours that your state requires and get your license to practice.
There are many things we are taught in massage school that are just the basics on how to work with clients/patients, but it is often taught as if it is the only way to work. I remember when I got out of massage school and started learning more, I felt like I had to relearn everything or to forget everything I learned in massage school. Not much of it seemed to apply to working with real people with real issues. Things I was told not to work on showed up on my table time after time. I taught myself how to work with people with serious injuries by using the basics of what I learned in massage school and then doing a little here and there and seeing what worked and what didn’t work. That is called critical reasoning or critical thinking – being able to apply what you know. There is really very little information in massage school that is black and white. Most of what we are taught is often just handed down from the last school owner/teacher and we have very little evidence that massage even works or how it works.
Clinical reasoning is at the core of all successful clinical practice in the health care professions. Yet, you don’t hear much about it in massage education because it’s much easier to sell a sexy new technique. Simply put, clinical reasoning is “…the sum of the thinking and decision-making processes associated with clinical practice.”1 The more effective you are at using your clinical reasoning, the more effective and successful you will be as a clinician. ~Whitney Lowe. Academy of Clinical Massage
It is all around the Clock and it is all about tests.
Basic massage school, massage licensing requirements are all based on the clock hours that state boards have deemed to be required to protect the public from harm from massage therapists. The state boards usually don’t have any interest in what is good or not good for the massage therapist or the massage profession itself. Their claim is that they protect the public from harm. They have arbitrarily created licensing laws around hours of education required as there is no other way really to measure the amount of education one gets. It doesn’t take into consideration how people learn and that they learn at different rates. What if it takes someone a week to learn one of the basic Swedish Massage strokes but it takes someone else 3 weeks to master it? What if you actually were in a school program that took this into consideration and you could learn and really understand the concepts before moving on to the next thing (and didn’t count hours of education)?
So you go to massage school and all learn the same things basically but are sent out into the world to find jobs in one of the two different sectors – spa/wellness or clinical? What makes up for the difference where education is lacking is Continuing Education (CE). CE has two different purposes really – to keep up to date on the latest findings and to fill the learning gaps between basic massage school and making a living with a career in massage therapy.
But again our CE focuses on the number of hours of classes and also the other big problem is that it focuses on techniques. The technique gurus are out there making tons of money on unsuspecting massage therapists who think that what they need is more and more techniques – or that one technique that will make them the millionaire they dream of. Just about anyone can set up shop as a CE teacher. There are over 220 techniques or different types of massage listed in the ELAP report. The problem is that it is not techniques that will help set you apart from all of the other massage therapists out there. It isn’t the techniques you know that will help you be a successful business person.
From clock hours to Competencies…why are we doing what we do?
What we have forgotten to do along the way is to start asking the question – why are we doing what we are doing – why are you working on that triggerpoint or fascia or muscle?
At the end of all the hours of education we are tested….to find out if you have learned what you need to know. Ooops….to late if you don’t know it or get it. This summative assessment process doesn’t work even though all of our school systems are based on this process. The Formative Assessment process that takes into consideration how you learn and how long it takes for you to learn and lets you take as much time as it takes to learn is a better system for monitoring learning. Schools haven’t changed their learning processes in 50 some years or so and are overdue for some changes.
Critical reasoning is
Personal Learning Networks can also support students in the learning process.