Chinese Medicine Board of Australia - Annual Practitioner Webinar
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Annual Practitioner Webinar

Practitioner webinar 7 December 2023

The Chinese Medicine Board of Australia (the Boards) hosted a webinar on Chinese medicine regulation for all practitioners and stakeholders on 7 December 2023. Members of the Board delivered a presentation on the regulatory role of the Board and its committees, registrant data and information on notifications.

This video is a recording of the webinar as delivered.



You can also download the presentation slides:

Chinese Medicine Board presentation - Practitioner webinar - 07122023  (2.32 MB,PDF)

The Board invited participants to submit any questions they had regarding the regulation of Chinese medicine. Many of these were answered during the webinar and can be viewed in the video above. Below are the responses to questions that were not answered during the webinar.

 

Participant questions

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Are guardians and carers able to sign consent for treatment forms on behalf of minors or patients unable to consent due to disability?

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Please refer to the section 4.2 and 4.3 of the Board’s Code of conduct, which explains expectations in relation to consent for children and vulnerable communities.

I’m wanting a more in-depth acupuncture written consent form, I have had brief look online but would like advice as to the best place to find a comprehensive consent form.

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Professional associations are best placed to provide advice.

Do you have any plan to push government medicare cover with Acupuncture?

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The Board has no authority in the area of health care funding. The functions and powers under the National Law relate to public safety only insofar as the Board regulates individual practitioners to ensure that those practitioners are safe to practice.

Will the Board look into CPD events’ qualities? Such as auditing some CPD providers or maybe set a registration system for CPD providers?

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The Board does not endorse, accredit or approve CPD providers.

In regards to CPD, do we need to count the hours undertaken or points? I notice that some trainings offered refer to points.

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The Continuing professional development guidelines state that CPD is measured in hours undertaken.

Is the 4 compulsory points included within the 20 standard annual points requirement or is it extra on top of the standard 20 points? Do we also need 20 points for Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine each or is combined 20 fine?

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The Board included the requirement in the CPD registration standard for practitioners to include at least four CPD hours related to professional issues each year as it is important that practitioners understand and review the current requirements for practice of Chinese medicine in Australia. The minimum number of total hours does not change depending on the number of divisions you are registered in, however your learning goals should reflect your practice.

For the patent herbs, called 'prepared herbs', like pills, capsules, can acupuncturist prescribe the prepared herbs for patients? How about the pain-relief patches and liniment? Can Chinese medicine practitioners sell Chinese herbs to clients without being registered as a dispenser?

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Acupuncturists who are not also registered as Chinese herbal medicine practitioners are not able to prescribe or dispense herbal medicines. Chinese herbal medicine practitioners do not need to be registered as dispensers in order to dispense Chinese herbal medicines to their own patients/clients as part of normal practice.

Guidance on prescribing Chinese herbal medicines can be found in the Guidelines for safe Chinese herbal medicine practice.


Dry needling is done by untrained or minimal trained allied professionals. How does this help safety of public? Most (but not all) dry needlers are registered health professionals (chiro, physio, pod, midwives etc). Do advertising guidelines apply? Will there be an education campaign on this?

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The National Law is based on the protection of specific professional titles and not defining the scope of practice of a registered practitioner. However, a complaint can be made to Ahpra if a person practices, promotes or advertises dry needling in such a way that it could be interpreted that the person is registered as an acupuncturist under the National Law, since ‘acupuncturist’ is a protected title.

If you have concerns about the safety of the public due to specific unregistered health care professionals providing dry needling services, they can be reported to the relevant State or Territory health complaints entity. If it is considered that a person’s activity in providing dry needling is unsafe (for example infection control issues, mismanaging a patient’s personal information, unsafe care) or unprofessional (for example racist or sexist behaviour), a complaint can be made to Ahpra if that person is a registered health practitioner. You can look up a practitioner on the Ahpra website to check if they are qualified and registered.

The Board is firm in its belief that practitioners registered as acupuncturists provide safe and effective care and has planned a campaign to highlight the benefits of seeing a registered Chinse medicine practitioner.


When will qualified Chinese medicine practitioners be allowed to safely use the schedule 1 herbs such as Mahuang?

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In Australia, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) regulates complementary medicines (including Chinese herbal medicines).

You can download the participant questions here:

Practitioner webinar 7 December 2023 Questions and answers (99.8 KB, DOCX)

 
 
 
Page reviewed 1/03/2024
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