I'm a doctor of physical therapy (MCPHS 2024), and licensed massage therapist (Cortiva 2014). I oppose the idea of a doctor of physical therapy (DPT) performing what is referred to as "dry needling." By extension, I absolutely oppose athletic trainers with less education performing it. 

-For a DPT to get "certified" in it, all they have to take is a 14 hour weekend course taught by another DPT. When I was in school (2024), one of my supervisors who was performing dry needling didn't even have that much; he just watched another DPT do it and then started doing it themselves. (Vs acupuncturists who do over 2000 hours of school and clinical work to get a license, half of those hours being explicit needling practice.)

-I kept getting the same script read to me in school/clinic that DPTs seem to give to everyone: that acupuncture needles only go into the skin and not into muscle tissue, acupuncture is called wet needling because the needles are coated in medicine, that acupuncture is better at treating internal imbalances than it is treating pain, or acupuncture deals with "energy" not anatomy - honestly don't know where these ideas came from, they're so erroneous. I've speculated it's due to the Physical Therapy profession as a whole realizing how helpful acupuncture is at treating pain so they wanted to be able to use the techniques while discrediting acupuncturists. They spread these outright lies so widely that it's creating a big misconception of what acupuncture is and what it's used for, thus doing direct harm to the very practice they are stealing techniques from.

-Acupuncture is one of the most widely studied medical interventions, and much of the literature used to justify the clinical legitimacy of "dry needling" is drawn from acupuncture research studies. The explicit "dry needling" studies performed by DPTs barely out perform placebo treatments, and show no difference in functional outcomes compared to other physical therapy treatments. 

-"dry needling" is in quotes because the current use of the term is pretending it is not an already existing acupuncture technique. Every acupuncturist is taught its equivalent; the dry needling description is definitionally acupuncture, so I don't know it's even possible to lie to the general public by saying it's something different. Some acupuncturists use it more, just as some massage therapists lean towards something more sports oriented, the opposite of relaxing; an individual preference, not an ideological one.

-There are no objectively determined standards of education, curriculum, standardized national examination, or requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) in place for "dry needling." There are no standards for clinical mentorship. In short, there is no current definition of the practice referred to as "dry needling" and no standardized system of demonstrating either minimal competency or safety.

Marketing a technique as distinct from a group that utilizes it, in order to stand out and/or broaden one's scope, is disingenuous. In this case, it's dangerous to the public. I hope I have sufficiently made my case as to why I don't think any athletic trainer should be allowed to perform acupuncture/"dry needling".