Virginia Regulatory Town Hall
Agency
Department of Health Professions
 
Board
Board of Physical Therapy
 
chapter
Regulations Governing the Practice of Physical Therapy [18 VAC 112 ‑ 20]
Action Practice of dry needling
Stage NOIRA
Comment Period Ended on 12/30/2015
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12/24/15  9:20 am
Commenter: Justin Mandel, DOM AP

Don't Cheat The Public
 

First and foremost public deserves to be protected from potential harm.  That is the job of state regulatory committees. 

Any untrained practitioner or practitoner with as little as 16, 54, 100, or even 300 hours of training using an INVASIVE procedure can produce negative, harmful, dangerous and even life threatening results.  

A physicial therapist while bring trained in healthcare has ZERO HOURS of training to use needles to treat patients.  They have not had to insert a single needle in all of their training.  Meanwhile, in NY for example a licensed acupuncturist had to treat a minimum of 250 patients to get licensed.  At even only 10 needles per patient that means these professionals have inserted 2,500 needles to get licensed.  Which means that there's no comparison between inserting zero needles and 2,500 of them. 

There is a reason why a Washington state court injunction has "banned" physical therapists from practicing acupuncture “dry needling” and the state of Virginia needs to adequately investigate that for the public's welfare. 

 

CommentID: 47094