Articles about

Intakes

Safety/Risk Continuum for Talking to Patients

March 27th, 2021 — Just like with needling, the more invasive/aggressive you are and the more territory you cover in verbal communication, the more risks you’ll encounter. Choose wisely.

Two un-answerable questions

December 30th, 2020 — Power can get confused with control, and bodies don’t respond to control. Thinking they do creates unsafe conditions for treatment.

Altered States (or, the Sketchy Guy)

March 12th, 2021 — Patients and potential patients in altered states represent an interesting category of interactions for community acupuncturists. Altered states are sometimes, but not always, a reason why it might not be safe to offer a treatment to that person at that time.

Treating Sexual Complaints in a Community Acupuncture Clinic

May 5th, 2021 — Treating sexual complaints in a community acupuncture clinic requires an active, intentional approach to creating social safety. There’s no one right way to do that, and doing it doesn’t mean you’ll be able to treat everyone.

Hope Is a Risk: Leadership and Pain Management

November 4th, 2022 — Successfully managing pain requires not fighting pain, because fighting pain involves focusing on pain, and focusing on pain makes pain worse. Resisting pain amplifies pain. Successfully managing pain, as a practitioner, means helping people focus instead on incrementally reducing their pain and incrementally increasing their quality of life. But the focus has to be on living life, not on fighting pain. And this requires leadership skills, because for most humans, the default setting is to fight pain.

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