{"id":1132,"date":"2012-06-02T11:23:23","date_gmt":"2012-06-02T11:23:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/?p=1132"},"modified":"2025-09-19T12:42:37","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T16:42:37","slug":"the-elap-flap-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/02\/the-elap-flap-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"The ELAP Flap Continues"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week I received the ELAP (Entry-Level Analysis Project)<\/strong><\/span> <\/a>Description from ABMP<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span> I\u2019ve been blogging about this for several weeks<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, first because I was upset that it was shrouded in secrecy; then last week because I finally got word of who is serving on this work group<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. While that information didn\u2019t exactly smooth my ruffled feathers, I was gratified to see that I know some of the people working on it and know that they do the best job they can at whatever tasks they take on. And the document has changed quite a bit from the first proposal I saw, which I had numerous objections to (see previous blogs under this one). That being said, I\u2019m still not thrilled with it.<\/p>\n

I feel that there are some big pieces missing here, and that the profession would be better served by pointing resources in a different direction. To begin with, the document makes the point that how regulatory agencies arrived at the 500-hour minimum that has been a benchmark of entry-level education is unknown\u2026that\u2019s true, but it\u2019s also unknown of how states with more hours arrived at those requirements. One thing that\u2019s mentioned is the influence of federal financial aid, which presumably has led some schools\u00a0 to offer more hours (or states to require them). As is the case with a lot of things, following the money trail often gives insight into real motivation.<\/p>\n

Personally, I don\u2019t think financial aid, or the lack of it, should be influencing this project at all. As a former school administrator, I\u2019ve been involved in the financial aid process first-hand in the past. Whenever a recession and massive job layoffs happen, as they have here in my home state for the past three years or so, there\u2019s a phenomenon that occurs. There\u2019s an influx of displaced workers into the community college system, where financial aid is a given, and I\u2019ve been told by students who had never even considered massage as a career that \u201cthe job counselor said I could get my schooling paid for if I would study massage.\u201d That\u2019s just not the reason I want to see people coming into the profession.<\/p>\n

I feel there are some other tasks that need to be completed before anything like this is undertaken. The ELAP description states only two goals, one of which is to assess how many program hours are needed to attain this KSA (knowledge, skills, and abilities) goal, assuming capable instruction.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a major issue, in my opinion\u2014because you can\u2019t and shouldn’t assume capable instruction<\/em>. The Alliance for Massage Therapy Education<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>is working on a National Teacher Education Standards Project<\/a><\/strong><\/span> to define the KSAs needed by teachers, both entry-level and more experienced\/advanced. There is also a line-by-line review of the MTBOK<\/strong><\/span><\/a> going on. To charge headlong into the ELAP before these two initiatives are complete seems like putting the cart before the horse.\u00a0 In all fairness, I am glad to see our organizations collaborating instead of refusing to play nice, but I would prefer to see them applying their resources to the National Teacher Education Standards project. The ELAP claims to be addressing what it takes to make a therapist able to practice competently. The fact is if the teachers aren\u2019t competent in a 500-hour program, they\u2019re not going to be any more competent in a 750-hour program until they <\/em>are educated. We need educators who are competent enough to teach competencies, not just stand in front of a classroom for a longer number of hours.<\/p>\n

Part of the rationale for this entire undertaking is the perceived\u00a0 lack of competence of entry-level therapists. While the FSMTB is about to launch a new Job Task Analysis Survey, and the NCBTMB recently did the same, we ought to bear in mind what it is that a JTA shows. They tend to be snapshots of a day in the life of a massage therapist: see the clients, do the laundry, keep up the paperwork. If the perception is that therapists are not doing what they need to do in order to keep the public safe and practice competently, is asking them what they do all day really effective for this purpose? I don\u2019t think it is. As one of the comments on last week\u2019s blog said, \u201cThey don\u2019t know what they don\u2019t know.\u201d There will be also be an accompanying survey within the JTA survey, intended to eliminate the “experience bias” present in these types of surveys, but I think that’s a tricky proposition. The return rate on these surveys tend to be very small–and usually answered by the minority of us who actually give a rip about the state of things. JTA surveys tend to be long and somewhat boring and it’s a very small percentage of people who will even fill them out to begin with.<\/p>\n

Reportedly, the ELAP project was conceived to help address the problem of portability of massage between the states. One of the statements reads in part \u201cwe need to identify the key KSAs required to pass a national licensing exam and provide competent, safe massage in an early massage career.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right there is another problem. While the FSMTB<\/a><\/strong><\/span> would like to see every state exclusively using the MBLEx, it hasn\u2019t yet happened. Since the NCBTMB<\/a><\/strong><\/span> is increasing the requirements for National Certification, leaving them with only the NESL options for entry-level exams in the states that accept those, the MBLEx will undoubtedly become exclusive in some places, but New York is not going to throw over their exam for the MBLEx, in my opinion. There is no such thing as national licensing, and there is never going to be. National licensing doesn\u2019t exist in any profession I am aware of. If you\u2019re a doctor, you still have to get licensed in each state in which you want to practice. While portability is a pain in the butt for massage therapists, it has never been shown to be harmful to the public or to the profession on the whole. Inconvenient, yes; but harmful, no.<\/p>\n

The FSMTB<\/strong><\/span><\/a> is also working on the Model Practice Act<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, as mentioned in the ELAP description. While I wouldn\u2019t go so far as to say it\u2019s a waste of time, I don\u2019t expect any influx of the regulated states lining up to change their existing practice acts to whatever the FSMTB comes up with. I\u2019m sure it will be a helpful guideline for the unregulated states if and when they decide to join the fold, but it will be interesting to see how that document ends up harmonizing with the ELAP. Since the MBLEx has been an exam that uses the 500-hour threshold (and in fact, you can take that exam at any point during your education, prior to graduation), if this project somehow demonstrates that more hours are needed, is the FSMTB going to jack up the requirement to sit for the MBLEx? The Model Practice Act project was also undertaken prior to the ELAP project starting up, and while I haven\u2019t seen a draft and don\u2019t know what it includes, my prior knowledge of state practice acts demonstrates that those generally spell out required education and the breakdown of those hours, so presumably the ELAP would affect the Model Practice Act project as well.<\/p>\n

Another part of the hoped-for result of this project is to cut down on the number of lawsuits and ethics complaints against entry-level massage therapists. Personally, I believe someone who is going to act unethically is going to do it regardless of how much education they have. When it comes right down to it, the injuries resulting from massage are a tiny fraction of what they are in other health-care related fields. I’m not saying there aren’t any<\/em>, but on the whole it’s relatively insignificant when compared to the number of practitioners.<\/p>\n

Lest anyone think I am against raising the standards of the profession on general principles, that\u2019s not so. I don\u2019t own a school, and I\u2019m already licensed, so it\u2019s not like this is going to inconvenience me personally. In fact, a few years ago when I was on the North Carolina Board of Massage & Bodywork Therapy<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, we looked at raising the hour requirement here (currently it\u2019s 500 hours). Like any good organizational beaurocracy, the result of that was to appoint a committee to study the situation. The research they conducted was to ascertain whether or not students from schools with higher number of hours had a better pass rate on the exams than students from 500-hour schools. The answer to that was a big fat \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure how much money is being spent on this project; the first proposal I saw mentioned between $60-70,000 to be shared as an expense between the organizations. I urge, or rather, challenge, all of these organizations to pour an equal amount of money into the AFMTE Teacher Standards project. Improving the KSAs of entry-level educators\u2014many of whom tend to be last year\u2019s star students, who may be talented at massage but without a whit of experience and training in teaching methodology\u2014will improve the KSAs of the students, the entry-level practitioners. That should be the important first step\u2014the key word there being first. <\/em>Don\u2019t try to build a house without a good foundation. It\u2019s a waste of time and money, and ultimately, it doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week I received the ELAP (Entry-Level Analysis Project) Description from ABMP. I\u2019ve been blogging about this for several weeks, first because I was upset that it was shrouded in secrecy; then last week because I finally got word of who is serving on this work group. While that information didn\u2019t exactly smooth my … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The ELAP Flap Continues”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,273,5,3,9],"tags":[16,17,231,21,239,240],"class_list":["post-1132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-legislation-of-massage","category-massage-associations","category-massage-therapy","category-politics-of-massage","category-research","tag-abmp","tag-afmte","tag-elap","tag-fsmtb","tag-mtbok","tag-ncbmtb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1132"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3742,"href":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1132\/revisions\/3742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauraallenmt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}