Acupuncturists are well trained professionals that use a wide array of knowledge in order to correctly address their patients' ailments. Learn more about acupuncture training from our medical expert in this free video.
Robert Linde, Acupuncture Physician and Registered Herbalist, has studied herbs since 1975 and practiced Traditional Chinese Medicine for over 6 years.
Hi, one of the questions my patients frequently ask me is what kind of training qualifies me to be an acupuncturist and to practice traditional Chinese medicine? Acupuncturists actually go to school for four years. Part of it is a baccalaureate degree and part of it in post graduate work. We actually study the same number of hours and maybe even a little bit more than MD's do. We do thirty-eight hundred hours of academic training as well as nearly a thousand hours of clinical training. During that time, we study everything from the foundational understanding of Chinese medicine, diagnostic system that's unique to Chinese medicine, as well as things like tongue and pulse diagnosis. Within that training we study things like, herbal medicine where we learn over five hundred herbal medicines and individual herbs and formulas that allows us to understand how that functions within the body. We also study some of the Western medicine. Some of the Western approaches and the Western drugs that are used often times to treat various diseases. Towards the end of our training we actually start to specialize. And we look at things like cardiology, gynecology, cancer treatments and other types of specialization within the field. One of the things that?s always one of the more interesting things for me is tongue diagnosis. Looking at individual?s tongues tells us so much about what is going on internally into the body system. Once we get all of that understanding, we take a national board exam that qualifies us both nationally and then we meet certain requirements within the state field. Here in Florida we're primary care physicians which allows us a wonderful scope of practice.
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