Action | Practice of dry needling |
Stage | Proposed |
Comment Period | Ended on 2/24/2017 |
In succintly summerazing and at times paraphrasing the AAAOM's comments as well as the summary by their administration office:
Dry Needling/Trigger Point Dry Needling (TPDN) or Intramuscuar Therapy and other pseudonisms are in fact alternate names for acupuncture procedures involving the insertion of FDA-regulated acupuncture needles as deep as 5' into patients, and constitute the practice of Acupuncture which is regulated by law.
In VA acupuncturists are required to have at least 1,365 hours of acupuncture-specific training including 660 h. of supervised clinical training.
Dry needling courses for Physical Therapists can have as little as a weekend of training and the draft regulations provide no minimum training standards.
The American Medical Association recently stated on this subject: "Lax regulation and non existent standards surround this invasive practice...For patients' safety, practitioners should meet the standards required for acupuncturists and physicians".
If Physical Therapists were actually required to meet the same standards in the practice of TPDN (and all its pseudonyms) as acupuncturists, I would see no issue with the expansion of the scope of their practice under these conditions. However with the totally inadequate, minimal and non standardized training in these procedures provided to Physical Therapists at this time, adding TPDN to their scope of practice creates a false sense of proficiency and safety, and is detrimental to public safety as it circumvents public health safety protections provided by law. It also undermines acupuncture's strong reputation for safety and effectiveness.
I therefore strongly believe that unless Physical Therapists meet the training standards required statutorily of acupuncturists and physicians , as stated by the American Medical Association, TPDN shouldn't be allowed/legal as part of their scope of practice.