Massage School-Med School Educational Integration: Potomac Institute's Experience with Georgetown
Written by John Weeks
Massage School-Med School Educational Integration: Potomac Institute's Experience with Georgetown
Summary: The NIH NCCAM stimulated relationship building between conventional and CAM schools with their R-25 grants. This article focuses on a pioneering relationship between Georgetown University School of Medicine and the nearby Potomac Massage Training Institute. The impact was felt as profound for students as well as the Institute.
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"We have a relatively big
mission for a massage school." Cathy McInturff Ayers, LM, the
director of education for Potomac Massage Training Institute (PMTI), was
reflecting on the range of pioneering education and research initiatives with
which she is involved. Components of her own job description speaks to the size
of the mission:
Lecturer on massage, Georgetown
University "Mini
Med School"
(for the public)
Developer and supervisor,
PMTI Student Peer Program with Georgetown
Medical School.
A good deal of this activity was stimulated by a five-year R-25 grant from the NIH
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to Georgetown,
with Adi Haramati, PhD, as lead investigator. While the grant period
officially ended in April 2006, according to McInturff-Ayers, "the
relationship is richer than ever."
Elements of the Relationship
Ayers and Haramati were part of a shared presentation at a 2005
meeting of the National Education Dialogue to Advance Integrated Health
Care. The Georgetown grant included development of a masters level program
in CAM, in-laying mind-body courses into the curriculum, and, in Haramati's
words, helping develop "a peer relationship (between different types of
providers) to clarify roles in an integrated care relationship." (For an Integrator look at some outcomes of the mindbody training, click here.)
Haramati's strategic view was that the program with PMTI was a starting place
in a step-wise movement toward deeper integration. It was a "focus on the
achievable rather than a comprehensive program." Haramati believed that by
bringing massage therapists into relationship with medical students that, among other outcomes, the
massage students would "quietly instill their caring attitudes" in the
medical students.
McInturff-Ayers at at NED reception
The relationship-building between the students focused on juts 4/5 contact hours in two interactive sessions. PMTI's massage students had the option of attending a 2.5 hour gross
anatomy lab with Georgetown
students. Then Georgetown medical
students had the option of a 2-hour sequence of learning about, and
experiencing, massage at PMTI. The program is was not mandatory. Ayers
estimates that in the 2005-2006 year roughly 70 massage students and 40
Georgetown students participated. (PMTI typically graduates from their 600+ hour
training two groups a year of 50-100 each.)
Increased Self-Confidence
According to Ayers, a key benefit of the program for her students has
been an increase in self-confidence:
"Our massage students experience incredible growth in
self-confidence in their interaction with medical school students. They learn
to articulate better. They learn to talk clearer about what they're feeling with their hands. They'll walk out of the room and say: 'We knew maybe the same
or a little bit more about the musculoskeletal system than the medical students
did.' This is a huge growth process for them." (1)
Ayers notes these additional institutional outcomes:
Curriculum Expanding
hours in musculoskeletal pathology, body systems pathology and medical
terminology. An already existing requirement for a case study research
paper has received additional attention.
Research PMTI formed a formal research
department and hired Martha Brown Menard, PhD, as research director.
Ayers states that the unusual
relationship between the medical school and the massage school "has just
blossomed and bloomed, moving beyond personal connections to
institutional."
(1) Ayers made this statement at the National Education Dialogue (NED) to Advance Integrated Health Care: Creating Common Ground, a project of the Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium. It is included in the NED Progress Report, which includes reports from other programs, and is available through clicking here.)
Comment: Transforming health care, one student at a time. To integrate practice, we must integrate education. The learning for all parties in this NCCAM-sponsored model of collaboration makes one yearn for an American Association of Medical Colleges that would proactively promote development of such programs. Then again, some CAM partisan would probably complain: Yeah, nice sharing, nice collaboration. We get a cadaver, you get a massage ...
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"We have a relatively big
mission for a massage school." Cathy McInturff Ayers, LM, the
director of education for Potomac Massage Training Institute (
