Hey! That’s the kind of FOI request that ought to be sent to every NHS Trust in the country. I wonder how many there are? Reply
I agree with Sceptical Letter Writer – I shall point @MrMMarsh of the MSS/1023 might be interested in seeing your FOI to get pointers for a template to be sent out across the land… Reply
@SLW 🙂 There are 66 of them in England and Wales and 14 NHS Scotland Health Boards in Scotland. Reply
Only 66? Gosh, I could rattle that lot of in a single afternoon! Do you fancy updating your FOI request to defend against the half-answers your local PCT used? Reply
I have done a 2 day course in “Western Medical acupuncture” we did spend about 30 minutes on the historical roots of chinese acupuncture and the rest of the time was spent learning about safety etc. if you are interested in the content of the course it is on this chaps website. http://www.acupuncturecourse.org.uk/ it is perfectly possible to learn the basics of the western acupuncture approach in a couple of days. so what the trust is spending seems about right to this quack… Reply
As a chiropractor I have done post-graduate training in acupuncture, although we tend to refer to it as “dry needling” to differentiate it from the Traditional Chinese Medicine paradigm. The courses I have done have been delivered by medics. They have commented that the benefits of training chiropractors, GPs, osteopaths and physiotherapists in this skill is that they already know the anatomy and physiology. This means that the necessary training is essentially learning the technique of inserting the needles and the relevant points, together with understanding the do’s and don’t’s. It is a useful adjunct to the work that we do with its biggest value, in my experience, being its effectiveness in deactivating mysofascial trigger points. “Sceptics” will cry “placebo”, but my experience suggests that there is more to it than that. However, even if it were only a placebo effect, it is effective. The cost of training a qualified physio or other healthcare professional is relatively small and do remember that this will have formed part of the physios CPD requirement, which means that if they hadn’t been paying for them to learn this, they would have been paying for some other training anyway. To suggest that spending £956.80 on needles in a year represents expensive placebo seems extraordinary. Given a referral rate of 16,000 patients for musculoskeletal problems, that means potentially a cost of less than 6.25 pence per patient. Of course not every patient will have had acupuncture, but all the same, this is actually very inexpensive. Reply
It would be interesting to see what the trust spent on other physiotherapy modalities like Ultrasound/indeferential during that period. But as it is not considered alt med bloggers are less intrested in its evidential base and use in musculoskeletal healthcare. Reply
Hmm! One also wonders what the cost of responding to this FOI request was? There’s no doubt that it will have been a burden on resources that otherwise could be directed at patient care. Reply
Acupuncture has been around for thousands of years and billions of people have experienced the benefits. If that isn’t enough evidence, then nothing will ever satisfy the author. Calling it a placebo only demonstrates the ignorance of the author and discredits his statements. To limit yourself to the results of biased and methodically flawed double blind studies is to limit your understanding that this model is in itself invalid and that it would take eons and infinite funds to prove everything that already is known to be effective through billions of testimonials. Reply
As you know little about me, please don’t try to tell me what evidence would or would satisfy me. And it is also irrelevant whether or not you think I am ignorant. The history of acupuncture is disputed, but the age of it is irrelevant, as is whether or not you think billions of anecdotes constitute proof. If you think any particular study is methodologically flawed and/or biased, please feel free to try to explain why you think so. Reply
Zeno – Can I ask a question? Supposing you get all these therapies taken off the NHS, what on earth are you going to do to fill in your time? Reply
Joe Bloggs I don’t suppose you have any details on what Dr K was talking about when he/she mentioned methodological flaws? Reply
Can I ask if you have a job or do you just spend your time making these people’s life miserable? Reply
No, I do know that. I wondered if you actually knew that. I am a patient who has had acupuncture and have been helped tremendously and people like you are trying to stop these things being allowed on the NHS. That is my only problem with you. It is nothing personal Reply
@ Joe Bloggs What do you mean by “these things” exactly? It seems a rather dismissive way to talk about serious health disciplines. Reply
I think that you are unable to see anyone else’s side apart from a skeptics belief. There is really no point in explaining how much I have been helped as I am just shot down in flames every time I try. Reply
@Joe Bloggs In all seriousness, why let one person’s point of view affect you so much? If you have been helped by such treatments, well that is good for you, but Zeno has his argument and this is supported by facts and evidence. You should simply respect the fact that other people do not agree with you and do something that gives you joy. I myself am sceptical of alternative medicine, but I do not tend to go onto the sites of those that do believe and post comments on there – it is reasonably considered to be ‘trolling’ and is never welcomed. Reply
“…unable to see anyone else’s side apart from a skeptics belief” Skeptics do not rely on ‘belief’, that is the whole point of bothering to gather evidence and support it’s effect on Quackery and nonsense. Belief is unreliable as it can be changed though rarely does in the light of proof, evidence and fact. Evidence is reliable because it stands as being true until new evidence proves otherwise. If you are unable to comprehend the difference between reason and nonsense, that would be a good place to start. Reply
Late to this debate. However, it worries me greatly that so many physiotherapists (including the Acupuncture Association of Chartered Physiotherapists) dabble in TCM acupuncture. Firstly because TCM is animistic/non-scentific. Secondly, even if TCM acupuncture obeyed the fundamental laws of physics, there is no way that physiotherapists are going to learn TCM in 80 hours (or does the BCA course involve 3,520 hours in anatomy?). 80 hours learning westernised acupuncture (largely based theories related to on neurohormonal and autonomic effects) would at least fall within the sphere of science, albeit these biological mechanism are not supported by a convincing number of clinical trials. Reply