My first post on the politics of massage was an easy-going encouragement to therapists to get involved in their governance. I’m afraid this one is a rant.
As I mentioned last week, six representatives of the NCBTMB attended my state’s (NC) Board meeting recently. Many of the officers of the NC AMTA chapter were present also, as were a lot of school owners and program directors. I am a member of our state Board and was present for the meeting. What I didn’t find out until after the meeting has made me madder than a wet hen.Â
Our state’s practice act is before the legislature right now with several much-needed revisions that AMTA and our Board have agreed are necessary, after several years of discussion and compromise on the part of both parties. Our state is a member of the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards (FSMTB) and we have also decided to start accepting the MBLEx in the near future.Â
According to our state AMTA chapter president, during a separate portion of the meeting between the AMTA officers and the reps from NCBTMB last week, the NCBTMB threatened at that meeting to appear on the legislature floor next week to protest against our practice act revisions, in the interest of forcing us to keep the NCE as our exam for state licensure. The chapter president informed them that doing so could kill the whole bill that we have worked long and hard for–this has been several years in the making–and they weren’t swayed a bit, saying they would rather see the whole effort scrapped than to see their exam usurped by the MBLEx. The clincher to this is that we have not at this time made a decision to get rid of the NCE; it could be an either/or choice of which exam to take.Â
I personally find it very disturbing that the NCBTMB feels that they have the right to interfere with our state governance. Our North Carolina Board joined the FSMTB because we feel it is a worthy organization. I just looked on the FSMTB website and 19 states are currently listed as members. I want someone to explain to me how it can possibly be a bad thing for state massage therapy boards to come together in the spirit of collaboration, because I don’t get it, and I certainly don’t get what the NCBTMB hopes to gain by threatening actions such as this.Â
On another note in the same vein, in July there is a meeting in Milwaukee convening for the initiative of composing and defining a recognized Body of Knowledge (BOK) for the massage therapy profession. This will be the work of the AMTA, the FSMTB, and the NCBTMB. Considering the tensions between the FSMTB and the NCBTMB, I hope they’re able to work well together, because so far that has not been the case, though not for lack of effort on the part of the FSMTB. The NCBTMB sees their monopoly (and no doubt a lot of income) going down the drain as more and more states accept the MBLEx; hence their threatening to make the effort to block our practice act from passing. That’s just plain over the line of acceptable professional behavior. This is like telling the public they can buy groceries, but they’re only allowed to buy them at Whole Foods–dictating what people must do. Last time I looked, we were still a democracy, not a dictatorship.Â
ABMP, the professional organization with the largest membership, claims that they initially weren’t even invited to attend the BOK meeting. I’m a card-carrying member of AMTA, but I don’t see how excluding ABMP serves any common purpose for the good of the profession. As already reported by Karen Menehan, editor of this magazine, Les Sweeney, the president of ABMP stated “ABMP believes a more productive approach would be to establish an independent commission, populated by individuals broadly respected both for their knowledge and their integrity, leaving their institutional affiliations at the door and working toward a solution benefiting the entire profession.” Very well said, Mr. Sweeney, but if the recent actions of the NCBTMB are any kind of indicator, that will happen about the same time pigs fly.
I’m an approved provider of continuing education under the NCBTMB (at least I was before I wrote this blog), and nationally certified myself. I’ve had a long, and many times less than satisfactory, relationship with them. I’ve watched the leadership problems unfold; followed along with the accusations of former and present board members and lawsuits; I’ve experienced crappy service from them many times, then seen it improve; and I had very high hopes that this organization was finally getting it together and getting on the right track. The actions of their leaders at our meeting last week have really made me stop and question if they’ve gone off the deep end altogether. If anyone from the NCBTMB leadership cares to respond to this post and tell us exactly what your motivation was for making the threat to try to kill our practice act revisions, I’d be very interested to hear it. I find it interesting that they only unloaded about this to the AMTA officers and didn’t announce it to the Board and the school owners.Â
The FSMTB has not yet involved themselves in approving providers of continuing education, and have not announced any intention to do so. Of course, the NCBTMB would probably sue them if they did. After all, they’re in charge, aren’t they? No, wait a minute, they only think they’re in charge.Â
If this move is meant to endear them to our Board members or the AMTA, or therapists anywhere, they are missing the mark. If they follow through with their threat to show up at the legislature next week and kill our bill, they are going to find out what a Southern redneck hissy fit looks like from quite a few corners.Â
Laura Allen



