Influence of Continuing Education Courses on Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine Profession

Background: Continue education (CE) is a means for practitioners, to maintain, develop and enhance current knowledge, and professional performance, thereby providing better services for patients, the public and profession.

Objective: The purpose of this paper is to examine continuing education courses that are offered for Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine (AOM) professionals and predict their influence (if any) on the profession's future practice trends. It will be interesting to know besides Pain management, which topic is most common.

Methods: Review CE courses approved by California Acupuncture Board as of September 2011. They could be on line learning or in-class activities.

Results: 673 CE courses were listed on the CA Acupuncture board website. The topics were on a wide range of topics such as Internal Chinese Medicine, TCM pediatrics, TCM Geriatrics, TCM Women's health, TCM Men's health, TCM Immunology, TCM psychology, TCM pain management, Acupressure, Different acupuncture technique, Moxa, TCM infertility, practice management and Qi Gong. Conclusion: Based on our review, pain management plays a major role, but women's health and psychology are also popular topics. We assume that these topics are being offered based on profession's and patients' demand and that they also represent the scope of practice of AOM profession. The relationship between CE course sponsors and providers toward practitioner practice habits still need to be determined.