I strongly oppose language that would allow athletic trainers to perform Acupuncture.

Allowing Athletic Trainers to perform dry needling without comprehensive education, clinical training, or regulation by the Medical Boards puts patients at serious risk. Needle insertion/ dry needling is one technique of acupuncture and requires extensive education. Acupuncturists receive 3-4 years of training, 2,500 -4500 hours versus an Athletic Trainer, PT, or Medical Doctor who study this technique over a 200 hr short weekend/ online course without adequate supervised training, passing multiple national boards, or the need for continuing education classes.

Dry needling has led to pneumothorax, nerve injury, and hospitalizations. Many patients say it’s too painful and not effective compared to acupuncture from Acupuncturists. ATs and PTs tend to be taught a very aggressive forms of acupuncture that goes too deep and leads to injuries.

When injuries such as pneumothorax happen they are associated with Acupuncture in the serious adverse event database which can lead to issues in our field and increases in rates of malpractice for our providers even though we are more cautious and better trained in this field. 

Acupuncture indeed works very well. There is a reason everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. Instead of taking over the field with minimally trained providers and putting patients’ lives and futures at risk please mandate that they REFER the patients to us. There are many Acupuncturists in the state who have dedicated their whole lives to helping patients and are ready to help with musculoskeletal pain. We deal with these issues every day. Or even the playing field- have them get their Acupuncture license by first attending a three or four year program at a cost of $200k, pass the mandatory 2-3 national boards, wait for their licensing, and perform the same number of continuing education classes annually. It’s a lot of work to become a provider in our field and I don’t think they would follow thru. They know acupuncture works and just want the financial benefit without the training.

Olympiads injured by dry needling done by non-Acupuncturists: Wallace1  Wallace2  Orr3

Thanks for putting patients first!