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WHAT IS GOING ON THE CAM WORLD?
Well the CAM world, apart from anything else, is GROWING. More and more people are training, practicing and most importantly USING these approaches. It is estimated that there are around 40,000 practitioners in the many disciplines that are termed Complementary and Alternative Medicine. There are 36,000 GPs. While it is fair to say that most CAM practitioners do not see as many patients as GPs, hundreds of thousands of people visit some form of CAM practitioners every year - it seems we are here to stay!
But, there is a huge difference in the length and depth of trainings about which the public may not have enough information to ask the right questions. So many therapy groups are starting to self regulate - the most important reason for this? To safeguard the public so they know that a practitioner has an acceptable level of training, knowledge and safety.
The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health is currently running a programme to support this process of self-regulation for a number of therapies. The government is also keen for this to happen. It will gradually affect everyone working as an alternative or complementary therapist. Already, firm recommendations have been given that suggest:
- training courses should become standardised, accredited and validated
- continuing professional development should be a core requirement
- therapists should have a clear understanding of the principles of evidence based medicine and healthcare
- disciplines should be clear about their limits of competence
This is all a few steps away from where many approaches currently stand but it will gradually happen. Why again? For the safety of the public. Those we are wanting to assist. So let's get our training houses in as good an order as we can!
So this is the other reason we do what we do. It is one way of our ways of contributing to the field; Hopefully it helps practitioners become better and better too, and as we said, WE LOVE IT!
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