Maine-Dartmouth Family Medicine Residency offers a longitudinal curriculum for residents interested in practicing medical acupuncture and pursuing certification by the American Board of Medical Acupuncture. Maine-Dartmouth, because of its existent integrative medicine curriculum, is an ideal locus for integration of training in medical acupuncture with the standard family medicine curriculum.
The goals of the longitudinal curriculum in medical acupuncture are:
- To provide the necessary level of instruction and supervision in medical acupuncture to meet educational requirements for certification by the American Board of Medical Acupuncture.
- To accomplish the first goal without interfering with residents’ educational or clinical responsibilities in family medicine.
- To demonstrate that a longitudinal program in medical acupuncture is readily adaptable to training in primary care specialties and is an alternative approach to meeting educational requirements for board certification.
Participating resident(s) meet with the supervising physician for 1 hour per week during the three years of residency training. Resident(s) complete required reading assignments prior to meeting with the supervising physician.
Over the three years of residency, there are five levels of acupuncture training:
- An Overview of Medical Acupuncture
- Patterns of Disharmony and Specific Treatments
- Modern Approaches in Acupuncture
- Energetics of Living Systems, Qi Gong, Introduction to Tuina, Dietary Counseling, Introduction to Chinese Herbal Medicine
- Clinical Practice and Research
For each of the first four levels, resident(s) complete a pre-test and a post-test as a means of determining where discussions should focus and whether educational goals have been met. During both the second and third year, resident(s) do one month elective rotations working with the supervising physician in his/her office. Competencies are determined by post-testing results, via observation of the resident(s) by the supervising physician in clinical settings and by abilities demonstrated as researcher and teacher.
Course Director: Richard F. Hobbs, III, MD, FAAFP, FAAMA