February, 2008

Children’s books are teaching me a
lot these days. Domitila is a Mexican Cinderella story. My five year
old seems to be able sniff these classics out as soon as she enters the
library. Smart girl - gives me a lot of hope for our future. Domitila’s
mother puts love into everything she does, even cooking with scruffy
cactus plants from the desert, transforming them into a delicacy
(nopales). Domitila learns her mother’s art and impresses the
governor’s son who endures great sacrifice, trying to find the
mysterious servant who can reveal the secret. Meanwhile, the evil
stepsister and her mother try to trick our heroine and her father with
delicacies made from stolen food - but the taste is horrible. We love
these stories and honor their wisdom. Why is it often difficult for us
to live by them?

This morning I revisited something I wrote about in the forums a year and a half ago. Back then I said that it felt like the capacity of WCA topped out at about 80%, meaning that once we filled about 80% of our slots it became increasingly hard to fill the remainder because it got increasingly harder for patients to find open slots that met their time constraints. (This is a variation of the difficulties one faces when moving at speeds close to the speed of light. .)

When I first wrote this some folks had slightly different percentages for their clinics. Makes sense- results will vary.

Well it was nice to hear that ACAOM tabled the entry-level(first-professional) doctorate for now, but it is clear in the end of theirstatement that they intend to go forward with this:

Last night I was in the kitchen, cooking up some radicchio for dinner* (Liver loves those bitter chicories!) and listening to "Marketplace" on NPR. I don't know why, I sort of hate NPR and Capitalism, but I have a soft spot for "Marketplace." Maybe it's because they talk about international events and ecological issues through the lens of macroeconomics; I guess it's nice that they're not pretending that that's what the news is mostly really about. (And last night they really won me over by using New Order and Siouxie for their interstitial music.) Anyway, this show inclulded a commentator, Charles Handy, talking about the obsession businesses have with growth.

Lately I've been doing a lot of reading about things that
have nothing to do with Chinese Medicine. The funny thing is that even
when I am not reading about things directly related to CM there is often a connection for me.

I found this passage in a book that refers to the Babylonian Talmud. It tells
the story of an old man who was seen planting a carob tree. As the king rode by he called out "Old Man, how many years will it be before that tree bears fruit?" The old man replied "Perhaps seventy years." The king asked "Do you really expect to be alive to eat the fruit of that tree?" "No," answered the old man, "but just as I found the world fruitful when I was born because my ancestors planted for me, so I plant trees for my children's children."

Fellow CANers,

If you can put up with the dry verbiage (brevity and no emotion seem to be required in such published reports!) you will see a very nice definition of social entrepreneurship. 

Are we on track?  Do you enjoy thinking of yourself as a social entrepreneur?  Here’s a carefully considered and researched definition that you might like to explore, to see how you measure up.

http://www.icesi.edu.co/ciela/anteriores/Papers/emsoc/2.pdf

See if you fit the description!

I found the November 2007 issue of the Kan Herb Company newsletter interesting.  First, because it was written by Ted Kaptchuk (whose herb classes is one of my favorite memories of the PCOM masters program in San Diego) and second, because he brings up a topic that many of us on this forum touch on frequently: the fact that Oriental medicine practitioners may be slowly getting sucked into the biomedical (say “western”) expectations of using our tools in Newtonian fashion, forgetting that our acupuncture and herbs are only part of a larger paradigm that includes the way we personally relate to our patients as professionals.

We at Community Acupuncture on Cape Cod
have just passed our two year anniversary. We’re still riding the wave of
publicity from last month’s press coverage, flirting with 100 patient visits in
a one week period and getting ready to add a third acupuncturist to the staff,
yet somehow I find it hard to figure out what to blog about. I do know that lately I have been asking
myself, “Did 10 years of solo practice teach me much about how to run a micro
business with more than one employee? “

I think there is a good chance that it did not.
Mostly I learned how to do acupuncture and talk about acupuncture and
not much else. Along with this, I have
been thinking about things I wish I had done sooner, and thought I would
mention a couple:

Tonight when I was avoiding doing real work ( answering email, WRITING THE BOOK, finishing up the syllabus for the upcoming OCOM community acupuncture class, argh, any number of other potentially constructive things that I promised Lupine I would do this weekend, argh! argh!) I decided to indulge in something I do every so often, which is using Google's Blog Search to check for mentions of "community acupuncture". This is almost like real work because it's how I often find out about acupuncturists who have started doing community acupuncture without joining CAN -- so when people ask me how many community clinics there really are, I can make semi-educated guesses. I do this every few weeks and as often as not I turn up a couple of new converts I never would have known about otherwise. Tonight, though, I found something even better -- check out this blogosphere ode to the Grassroots Gals! 

The other day I had a new patient and like I usually do I asked her how she found out about us.  She replied that her doctor recommended us.  That in itself is not that unusual for us because we get several referrals a month from doctors who we've never talked to.  Usually we find out that the doctor in question found out about us because one or more patients of his are also patients of ours and heard great things about us, especially the price and so he recommends our clinic.

This case was a bit different however.  This doctor had no patients who knew of us.  Instead this guy found out about us because the place he works had a link to us and sometime previously he looked into the link!  The place he works? The Providence Hospital chain.  Here's the link: http://www.providence.org/oregon/for_employers/employee_assistance/e40Resources.htm

Remember the first-professional doctorate that we were discussing a couple of months ago?

How it seemed like an idea that might really hobble acupuncture rather than elevate it? 

Remember how CAN clinics were able to gather over 500 signatures in under 2 weeks?

Well, it seems as though our voices have been heard... please read

http://www.acaom.org/PdfVersion/Resolution%20on%20First-Professional%20Doctorate[1].08.pdf

(I am running off to work and haven't yet found the link to the comments on the ACAOM website...if you find it please post a link.... apparently they got over 600 pages of comments!) 

Last night while I was asleep, I awoke with a vision so bright and clear, it was all I could do to keep from dashing to my keyboard to plunk it out.

I was recalling a trip I took to New York City, some two years ago now. I was going to a NADA conference, (short for National Acupuncture Detox Association, or nothing), an appropriate name for such a humble but determined group of health care providers. I had spent a number of weeks in Vancouver prior to this, working at a Drug rehab center and felt called to know more about NADA and the people behind it.

Much like Dwight Eisenhower envinsioned a national network of superhighways and John Kennedy thought of landing a man on the moon   , the CAN website is undergoing a huge reconstruction so that it can handle the needs of everyone who uses it.

Much of the work you'll never see as it entails making the site more flexible so that future changes will happen much more easily than otherwise. Still we can already see some changes like the different login proceedure or the look of the forums. Unfortunately as part of the makeover some previous features were temporarily disabled: private messaging, "mark forums as read", and others are gone now but will be back soon: later this week.

I think it was Lisa who said something like "altruism is the core of our practice as acupuncturists." (My paraphrase.)

Master Cheng Yen, the founder of Tzu Chi - the Buddhist Compassion Relief Foundation expressed this principle similarly. In explaining to her followers in TIMA - the Tzu Chi International Medicational Association - she said that it is not technical skill nor vast knowledge which is most important, but a kind heart.

Although I often egoistically view myself as a typical overbooked do-gooder, modern day multi tasker, after I received 3 separate requests to attend the Seattle TIMA's bi-monthly meeting - including a visit to a local homeless tent city to assess needs and coordinate care - I knew I could not refuse.

My road towards becoming a full-time CA practitioner has been long and bumpy, but here I am, and as a few posts have indicated, lots of people are in a place I can definitely relate to.

First off, I think people need to not be so hard on themselves, this is really difficult to get, it seems to me, especially if you haven't been in practice a long time, or even if you have and just haven't been that busy. There are a couple of different obstacles to overcome before you're really comfortable with seeing 40+ patients a week. One of them is timing.