From Good to Great: Elevating Your Acupuncture Practice with Safety, Communication, and Industry Knowledge

Occam's Razor is one of the most useful (yet misunderstood) models of problem solving in your toolbox, but in essence, it can be interpreted as "keep it simple." Simple solutions are often the best, in acupuncture and in the rest of life, as they involve fewer assumptions. How does this play out in medicine and in acupuncture? When using one point to affect more than one problem, the rest of the puzzle pieces often fall into place. In diagnosis, we can sift through all of the signs and symptoms to arrive at a simple diagnosis rather than considering a complicated and interwoven set of interactions. In medicine, after all, the problem is most likely to be a common condition. Dr. Reaves will illustrate the use of this principle as it can be applied in musculoskeletal cases, making diagnosis and treatment more confident and effective, to encourage democratizing the field among practitioners so the largest number can achieve the most success with diagnosis and treatment.

How does acupuncture compare to opioids for acute pain in terms of benefits and risk of harm? Evidence can be cited to patients and other healthcare professionals to elucidate this subject. This talk by Dr. Nielsen can serve as an introduction to the afternoon in-depth review on acupuncture therapy for acute pain in inpatient and emergency department settings.

Many patients grapple with their sex lives. With little knowledge of how their bodies work or what factors affect the quality of their experience, they may have unrealistically high expectations for sexual relations.  When these expectations are not met, negative ramifications may influence their health, identities, intimate relationships, and even parenting. In this class, Felice will share, in a language your patients will understand, facts about sexual anatomy and physiology that can make a substantial difference in the ways your patients feel about themselves and their intimate lives. She will elaborate on sexual function problems and detail how you can guide your patients through these challenges to greater health, vitality, and confidence using ancient teachings from deep within our medicine.

A crisis in pain management persists worldwide, as does the epidemic of opioid overdose deaths, addiction, and diversion. Medicine is meeting these challenges by returning to its origins of multidisciplinary pain care. More than 50% of chronic opioid use begins in the acute pain care setting. Research indicates that acupuncture can reduce dependence on opioids for acute pain. Most acupuncturists are not aware of the research done in hospitals and emergency departments. Acupuncturists need to be informed ambassadors to fully represent the advantages of acupuncture therapy for acute pain. Dr. Nielsen, who is published on acupuncture for acute pain and consults on research projects related to acupuncture for acute pain in the emergency department, will share her experience and provide a map for understanding and communicating about acupuncture for acute pain.

Hear from a panel of American Acupuncture Council experts on protecting yourself and your practice from liability. Explore safety issues, communications, and new developments in the profession that can change the way you practice. Did you know there are significant changes in interpreting privacy regulations for healthcare providers? Do you know when to follow recommendations and requirements from local, state, and federal governments, and the CDC, and if they conflict? What else don’t you know that could hurt you and your practice? Recognize trends in laws and patient expectations, what’s considered acceptable in asking and answering patients, and record-keeping that limits your exposure to liability, board complaints, and insurance audits. Featuring Acupuncture Today editor and practice management expert Marilyn Allen; American Society of Acupuncturists Vice Chair of Public Policy Nell Smircina, DAOM, LAc; acupuncture billing expert Samuel Collins; and market development expert Brandon Hoffman.

We see many patients who are affected by extreme emotions, either their own or those expressed by others. Our medicine agrees that expressing emotion is a healthy part of normal living, but our society is plagued by extremes of bullying, violence, bigotry and abuse. How did our patient base and surrounding culture become overrun with pathologically intense opinions and emotions and what, if anything, can we as practitioners do about it for those who seek our care and guidance? Felice will examine how our evolution as a species has set us up for the emotional explosions, tyranny and close-mindedness we see around us. She will outline how Eastern medicine has ingeniously worked with the limitations of humanity to create a system for understanding and altering human emotion to inspire greater balance, calm and harmony within society and the individual. She will also explore how your work can support patients in gaining a greater awareness of their hidden biases and toxic feelings.

Treating pain is assumed to be what all acupuncturists excel at… except it is never that easy. Often the larger muscles at the surface appear to be dysfunctional, and treatment is directed to what appears to be the pain generator. Assessment, however, is elusive, and these structures are often quite illusive in their presentation. Join Whitfield Reaves of the Acupuncture Sports Medicine Clinic, which integrates traditional acupuncture with Western orthopedics, who will drawn upon his over forty years of experience in this field, to illustrate how to treat the primary stagnation of qi and blood in three common conditions. Discover how to diagnose and treat rhomboid minor and levator scapulae dysfunction causing scapular neck pain, supraspinatous and infraspinatous dysfunction causing deltoid area pain, and the medial joint space of the knee and the pes anserine causing medial knee pain.