RE: Why so many aren't practicing after 5 yrs....

[Guest guest]

I quoted a statistic about 5 posts ago regarding the high failure rate of

acupuncture practices. The statistic is, " 79% of acupuncturists are not

practicing within 5 years of graduation. " Sorry, I can't give the actual

source. It was read to me in a class about 6 months after I graduated and

it scared me to death. Since there was no other field that interested me

or that I was trained for anymore, I absolutely had to make this work, come

hell or high water.

 

 

 

Over the years I've thought about this statistic and have thought about why

it might be that there's such a high number of non-starters. I pondered my

own class. I think that perhaps about 35% or so of my class (1997) is

practicing, although I don't know that for certain. I intimated before that

people failed because they couldn't do business. After thinking about it,

though, I realized that probably 10% of my class never really intended to

practice. A couple of them just went to school for the fun of it. One

wanted to practice out of his van driving up and down the west coast. Some

didn't have the people skills to get repeat business despite doing well on

the exams. We can't really compare ourselves to traditional (western)

practitioners, though. Think about MDs, or PTs, or DDSs, or RNs. How many

of them HAVE to be self-employed because there are no jobs in their fields?

Probably none. It's rare to find a renegade western practitioner out there

on his/her own. Nearly all western practitioners are employed, the

complications of business removed from their hands. We are not in that

boat. How many " jobs " exist for acupuncturists? I wish I had that

statistic.

 

 

 

So, probably the 21% that do survive the 5-year mark is not much different

than would be for any other field that required entrepreneurship. Perhaps

we should be proud??

 

 

 

It sure would've been nice, however, to have been fully aware of this prior

to attending school and taking out huge student loans. In a perfect world,

I would expect the schools to divulge this information. But then, schools

are a business and their job is to sell tuition and degrees, not be the

baby-sitter to a profession (or should it be?).

 

 

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

Barbara

 

_____

 

Chinese Medicine

Chinese Medicine On Behalf Of mike

Bowser

Thursday, January 25, 2007 9:40 AM

Chinese Traditional Medicine

RE: Re:TCM- Insurance

 

 

 

Lynn,

 

Just curious as to what you think about the HMO's that have not fulfilled

their mandate (what should be

done with them) as they have no interest in lowering their overheads (admin

expense is about 30% vs

Medicare 3% and Medicare has received a higher satisfaction rating then

HMO's)?

If we want to be a viable profession we need to become more involved and

work with making

changes that must occur. I was appalled that so many LAc's are out of

business after 5 years.

At this rate, it sounds like we are a sinking ship. Healthcare needs reform

and we need to step

up and become included in that discussion, asking to be left out is not

working for us thus far.

 

I guess this really begs the question of whether or not we want to be

considered a legit healthcare

profession vs an oddity.

Mike W. Bowser, L Ac

 

Traditional_ <Chinese Medicine%40From>

Chinese_Medicine: lynndetamore@

<lynndetamore%40Date> Thu, 25 Jan 2007

05:15:59 -0800Re:TCM- Insurance

 

avery, i concur. and, when i'm at aom fxn's i generally find myself alone

with my anti universal health care stand. the older i get the less i trust

govt to run it well! thank you. lynn[docaltmed@sbcglobal

<docaltmed%40sbcglobal.net> .net] wrote:Mike,If we get single payor

universal health care, we will get a newfangled version of Medicare, and

indeed those issues will become moot because we will all go out of

business.AveryAvery L. Jenkins, DC, FIAMA, DACBNChiropractic

PhysicianFellow, International Academy of Medical AcupuncturistsDiplomate,

American Clinical Board of Nutritionwww.docaltmed.com---- E-MAIL

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