The romance of being a starving acupunk

October 1st marked our one year anniversary at neighborhood acupuncture project.

It slipped by without notice until standing in the office, Tony looked up at our project calendar and said, “huh, looks like our anniversary was a couple days ago”. We had to laugh at our irreverence. Paul, Tony & I have a hard time finding a day that we can all meet, let alone put together a celebration. It’s not that we don’t love our baby, we just rather invest the time figuring out how to make her survive! :>

Things continue to pick up. We have a good base of loyal patients. Patients are passing out cards, putting up our flyers. We are definitely on the right track.

The income sucks right now but the experience is priceless.

For those of you who do not know us, we are only 1-2 years out of school. We could at this point start trying to schedule patients at 4/hr, but there is a subconscious resistance. Right now we are scheduling patients every 1/2 hr (this being the reason for the pittance we pay ourselves). Going from school clinic where you are scheduled one patient every 1 and half hrs to 2/hr took some time to get used to. However, it was not like we had enough patients knocking on our door for the first 6 months to even challenge us to schedule patients at 3-4 and hour.

This past year was about us getting our bearings. We had more time to play around with the different acupuncture styles we each learned, figure out how we are going to fit herbs into this model (we are using ground raw to keep it affordable and then have a smattering of patents), figure out the business aspect, find volunteers, do presentations in our community. There is just a host of things to do.

If we had started this with more years of acupuncture experience behind us, then a shift to 4/hr might have transitioned easier.

I have been working one day per week at an HIV/AIDS wellness/resource center. They book me 3 pts/hr and this has helped me to really step it up. I don’t do herbs, which really makes it a lot easier. I also don’t have to run & answer the phone or check people out. These things really do take a chunk of time. The clientele is a lot different to. They are new to acupuncture & really are not curious about what I’m doing…they just want to feel better. So there is not much talking. This really helps with time. I actually find myself wanting to amp it up to 4/hr, but they don’t have enough room. I can’t believe after only year out of school I’m at this point.

We are about to step it up to 3/hr at NAP and see how it goes. We now have most of our shifts staffed by volunteers, so that helps immensely. I spend a lot of time talking to my patients at NAP. Some days its like a little social club in there. So I’m learning to talk less. It really does help to have the volunteers, because the patients are starting to get to know them and talk to them….so it isn’t this clinical get in get out kind of feeling. Also, having students who can fill the herbal scripts is a godsend.

So. If you are about to graduate and are thinking of starting a community acupuncture model…there are some snags that you may encounter that someone with more years under their belt are not going to. Starting with someone with more years experience would be ideal. Then again, you may be uber driven and have only one style of acupuncture you want to do.

But DO NOT be daunted by being poor for another year. Since I don’t have money to go out, I just stay home & read all the stuff I didn’t have time to in school. Some of the most inspired artists were hungry...same can be said for acupunks!:>

I can’t tell you how MUCH I have learned in the past year. At an average of 25 pts per week, I have some great case studies. The harder cases are willing to stick it out longer because they can afford it, so then you actually have more faith in what you are doing.

Ah this has all been said before I’m sure.

I guess this is just another testimony to the wonders of community acupuncture!

Laura