Protecting the public safety is a good reason for regulation.
People have been injured by PT’s or Chiropractors doing dry needling. When we see a story about that we share it. So I understand the comments on the previous post.
And, there were two recent threads on Facebook that caught my attention.
An LAc posted a question about whether it was possible to cause an infection by needling CO4. He’d treated a patient who later developed redness at the area. The patient visited an MD and was prescribed an antibiotic. I was surprised at the practitioner’s question, and surprised and mortified at the responses. Which included: The MD is just trying to cover his ass, they just like to prescribe antibiotics, not if you used sterile needles, not if you used an alcohol swab on the area first, people freak out all the time, etc. A day or two later, the initial questioner reported that the patient was now hospitalized with a staph infection.
Another LAc wrote that a patient reported she’d had a pneumothorax from a treatment and was now asking for financial compensation for a portion of the medical expenses and several weeks of missed work. What should the practitioner do? Of course, getting some documentation makes sense, but the responses also included: if it really happened why doesn’t the patient have a lawyer, if you’d given her a pneumothorax you would have known it immediately, she must have had some sort of underlying medical condition so you aren’t responsible, etc.
Personally, I know some amazing practitioners who have firsthand experience with pneumothorax(i?) on both ends of the needle.
I don’t believe we have sufficient record keeping to know the relative safety records. Dry Needling does involve a deep and aggressive needle technique and so is more likely to do damage. That’s true even with an LAc holding the needle.
When a story comes out that involves harm done by an LAc, we make all sorts of excuses and focus on our generally good safety record. When we find out about damage done by a PT or DC, we trumpet the news, and make smug and superior comments.
When it comes to fairness, most of the things I hear LAcs complaining about are either self-inflicted or, sometimes, imagined. The length of our training — we’ve been behind the increase. The differing insurance reimbursement — is that insurance thing working out for anyone?
This post is mostly blogger’s prerogative to give what is really a comment on the previous thread a higher visibility. I won’t make a habit of it. But hwds’ are one of my pet peeves — that’s hypocrites with double standards, and when our response to what happens at the pointy end of the needle seems to vary so much depending on who is at the handle, I think that term applies.