Revised Chinese medicine guidelines to take effect on 1 December 2023

01 Sep 2023

Two revised guidelines released by the Chinese Medicine Board of Australia (the Board) today will take effect on 1 December 2023.

After extensive consultation, the Board has released the revised:

• Guidelines for safe Chinese herbal medicine practice
• Guidelines on infection prevention and control for acupuncture and related practices.

Both guidelines have been released today so Chinese medicine practitioners have three months to become familiar with them before they take effect on 1 December 2023. Supporting material, including Chinese translations of quick reference guides, has also been updated for both guidelines.

The Board produces standards, codes and guidelines to support safe and professional practice by Chinese medicine practitioners. Guidelines developed by the Board are reviewed regularly to ensure they remain current.

The Guidelines for safe Chinese herbal medicine practice were first published in November 2015 and were developed to address the absence of national Chinese herbal medicine guidelines.

The guidelines:

• provide clear guidance to practitioners on the consistent writing of prescriptions, labelling and dispensing of medicines
• enable practitioners to identify and correct any deficiencies in practice, and
• encourage consistency within the profession in the use of herbal names and patient record-keeping.

An independent survey of practitioners commissioned by the Board about the usefulness of the guidelines showed strong evidence of support for the guidelines.

A public consultation from January to March 2022 informed improvements to the guideline’s structure to re-order and simplify the content and remove duplicated information.

Following the publication in 2019 of the updated Australian guidelines for the prevention and control of infection in health care (the Australian guidelines), published by the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, the Board’s Guidelines on infection prevention and control for acupuncture and related practices were also updated.

The extensive updates to the revised Board guidelines make it a more comprehensive document that highlights sections of the updated Australian guidelines that Chinese medicine practitioners must be aware of.

These guidelines were also consulted on in 2022 and have resulted in refinements in guidance, including hand hygiene, developing an infection control plan, and the design of facilities and procedures for the use and disposal of sharps.

Board Chair, Adjunct Professor Danforn Lim, thanked all stakeholders and individuals who contributed to helping improve the quality of the revised guidelines, which will help to ensure public safety.

‘We will review both sets of guidelines within the next five years and will continue to update the Nomenclature compendium of commonly used Chinese herbal medicines on our website on an annual basis.'

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