published 7/4/04, updated 2/17/10
Who Am I to Say?
More information about my qualifications, credentials and professional experiences for my readers and customers
I am a writer and retired Registered Massage Therapist (unusually well-trained for a massage therapist, a 3000-hour program). I’m almost done with a Bachelor of Health Sciences degree. I am a peer reviewer for The Natural Standard, and a copyeditor for Science-Based Medicine. My most important qualification is more than a decade of workaholic post-graduate study, clinical experience, and constant conversations with readers from around the world, including many experts who have provided countless suggestions and criticisms.
Read on for much more detailed information about my background and qualifications.
Paul Ingraham, SaveYourself.ca publisher
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Clinical experiences as a Registered Massage Therapist
I was a “Registered Massage Therapist” or RMT for a little under 10 years. I was what would be called a “medical” massage therapist in most places — that is, I was not just a “masseuse.” I was trained in and have extensive knowledge of musculoskeletal health science and injury rehabilitation. I also carried on to do vastly more academic post-graduate study than most of my colleagues. That’s no empty boast: I have the vast body of work to prove it.
RMT’s certified in British Columbia are unusually well-trained compared to other massage therapists around the world. I studied for 3 years, a 3000 hour program including 500 hours of internships. Three years of training is three times longer than most regulated jurisdictions in North America and Europe. For more information about these unusual certification standards, see Massage Therapy In British Columbia (Canada).
In BC, Graduates have to take some large government certification exams; they are tested on anatomy, physiology, pathology, physical assessment, and several manual therapy modalities. About half my graduating class failed on the first attempt, and some even required 3 and even 4 attempts. (Yes, I did pass on the first try, with excellent grades.)
I maintained a busy full-time practice here in Vancouver from mid-2000 to 2010. I did about 5000 treatments in that time — that’s a lower number than many therapists, but “busy” is defined in many ways (all my appointments were long, for instance, and I did an extraordinary amount of rehab consultation with clients outside of their appointments). I was certified by the College of Massage Therapists of British Columbia, which is regulated by the Province of British Columbia.
Bachelor of Health Sciences and other scientific training
I’m currently nearing completion of a Bachelor of Health Sciences degree. Just four more courses to go — two substantive ones, and two fluffy electives like “The History of Science.” Since I have been reading about the history of science recreationally for twenty years, I expect to fly through that one!
Now that I am retired from massage therapy, I am considering pursuing another science degree, perhaps biology.
The educational value of being a science journalist
Creating this website has constituted a substantive education. The volume of work I’ve done is nothing less than staggering: about two million words of original articles and tutorials for this website — that’s about 10–20 books worth — with a vast, well-maintained, annotated bibliography.
Nor was it a passive intellectual exercise. I am not an “armchair therapist.” The publishing process was powered by the clinical challenges right in front of me. Practically everything on SaveYourself.ca was originally written for a patient, to answer a question I didn’t have time to address during an appointment — and then, once something is published, readers from around the world weigh in with their comments, anecdotes, and of courses their constructive criticisms, bitter complaints, and even insults … all of which inspire round and after round of research and revision.
Creating SaveYourself.ca has not been a passive intellectual exercise. I am not an “armchair therapist.”
Eventually, though, interactions with experts and readers became more important than clinical experiences. Particularly in the last three years, I can’t publish anything without getting email about it! It’s like having a thousand editors and critics. I can’t get away with being sloppy. My readers won’t let me neglect or forget any important point. Countless times it is my readers who have suggested something I never would have thought of, or reminded me of something I should have.
The total educational value of creating this website is unique and incalculable. And, like anyone who tries to study a subject deeply, I have inexorably, inevitably discovered that “the more you learn, the less you know.” I have gone down the rabbit hole, and discovered that there is practically no solid ground in musculoskeletal health science — that practically everything about pain and injury is mysterious and controversial when you put it under the microscope.
Above all, creating SaveYourself.ca has taught me to be extremely skeptical of anyone who thinks that they “know” anything at all — if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that no one really knows anything about this stuff, and it’s going to take another century of good scientific research to clear some of it up.
The Continuing Education Nazi: “No credit for you!”
If creating SaveYourself.ca was so dang educational, you’d think I could have gotten some continuing education credits for it, right?
Wrong!
The CMTBC will give out a few CECs to registrants if they publish in a “recognized” magazine or journal, which includes even amateur publications like their own journal — a silly little rag. The CMTBC gave me a few credits for a series of articles I published there (which required no continuing education and no more than a few hours of work), but flatly refused to give me one lousy credit for anything I’ve produced for SaveYourself.ca: tens of thousands of hours of scholarship and writing, which is not only a unique accomplishment in the profession, but an idealistic service to my profession and readers around the world.
Not worth one credit.
The CMTBC flatly refused to give me one lousy credit for anything I’ve produced for SaveYourself.ca, yet other professions actually require proof of independent study.
It doesn’t appear that the CMTBC has much respect for scholarship. I realize it’s partly just a red tape thing, and there’s also some predictable failure to keep up with the times and recognize how important internet publishing has become. But I made these points and others to them, and it was like talking to a brick wall. The CMTBC wasn’t just saying no — they wouldn’t discuss their decision with me, either. The chair of the committee responsible mostly just seemed irritated that I was questioning her committee’s decision.
Is it really unreasonable to ask a regulatory body to recognize independent scholarship as evidence of competency and continuing education? Not only is it reasonable, it’s actually how other professions regulate. For instance, the physiotherapists of BC are actually required to report on their personal efforts to continue their academic education: that’s one of the ways that they measure competency!
Not in massage therapy in BC. Here, my constant scholarship over a decade was considered completely irrelevant to my continuing education requirements.
Credentials are important, but they’re not everything
No one is more aware than I am of the fact that I’m not a doctor or a scientist. I wish I could throw a nice juicy “MD” or “PhD” behind my name, and I have a lot of respect for those who do: those are careers I seriously considered, but rejected because I lacked the intestinal fortitude, the sheer stamina required to get through the training.
And then, ironically, I ended up working extremely hard to compensate for my lack of credentials. Life is funny!
Lacking my own academic credentials, I never ask my readers to take my word for anything. Instead I analyze, interpret and explain the ideas of people who do have impressive credentials — not because we should trust them for that reason alone, but because they are participating in the most interesting and valuable dialogue available. What do they say? Why? Should we believe them? Should we be skeptical? Why?
It’s that devotion to the discussion, I hope, that makes me trustworthy in spite of the lack of credentials.
It all comes down to having unusually high journalistic standards for myself and for this website. For more information about that, see:
The curious case of Haven: yet more odd qualifications
The Haven grants a prestigious diploma of counselling. I have studied there off and on since I was a teenager.
I have also been influenced by about two decades of highly intermittent but always soul-rattling workshops at the prestigious Haven Institute for Professional Training. Those experiences are responsible for so much of who I am today both professionally and personally that calling it just an “influence” would be quite the understatement — it’s more like a foundation.
Peer reviewing for The Natural Standard
I review “monographs” for Camrbidge’s The Natural Standard — humungous, exhaustive explorations of specific subjects in integrative medicine.
I’m also on the editorial review board of The Natural Standard. I put in my two cents on some of their publications, usually ones related to musculoskeletal health care. The Natural Standard is an international research collaboration that “aspires to raise the standards for complementary and alternative medicine information, towards improving the quality of healthcare delivery overall.” I’m still not sure whether or not they actually do — indeed, I’m frankly skeptical about the publication — but it’s been an interesting experience working for them.
My duties entail reading and commenting on scientific monographs, which is pretty educational. The editor always seems by my harsh, critical reviews, so I get to exercise my science muscles. And many times I have found myself researching something I never, ever would have looked into otherwise.
The athletic connection
I write a lot about sports injuries, so it would be nice if I had some significant experience with athletics, eh? And I do: a decade of playing and coaching ultimate (a hard-running Frisbee sport), during which time I have had my fair share of direct, painful experience with some of the athletic injuries I write about, especially iliotibial band syndrome. I also practiced and studied t’ai qi and qigong regularly for about 20 twenty years.
Notes
- It’s common for chiropractors and naturopaths in particular to brag that they have “the same education” as a physician. Bollocks. Doctors learn “far more about practical medicine during the first two or three years after finishing med school than in med school itself, during mandatory supervised experience under intense patient load within hospitals and group practices. No other kind of medical profressional has that kind of hands-on training” (pmoran commenting on ScienceBasedMedicine.org). Return to text.