Practicing Chinese Herbal Medicine in a Hospital Setting

keywords:  hospital practice, CHM practice, specialty practice

Practice of Chinese Herbal Medicine in a hospital setting by an L.Ac.

Training/Credential Guidelines:

• Practitioner must have current/active diplomate status from NCCAOM as:
• Dipl. Oriental Medicine (includes Chinese Herbal Medicine board exam) or
• Dipl. CHM
• *however, as of 2015 NCCAOM is making it easy to update from Dipl. C.H. to Dipl. O.M.
• So, I recommend to keep it at Dipl. O.M. since practitioners can now change their certificates over to O.M.  Sticking with one diplomate certificate (when it is an easy change to make for a practitioner trained and who has passed the herbal board exam) makes explaining a new process to credentialing simpler.
• Current state license
• Experience—minimum 2 years experience in 20 hours/week AOM practice at min prescribing CHM to patients.

Recommend the following:

• Understanding and/or taking CEUs in herb-drug interactions, pharmacodynamics and kinetics
• Understanding and training, including CEUs beyond the formal schooling, prescribing individualized formulas as well as patents.
• If working with a specialty population, such as pediatrics, recommended practitioner show he/she has additional training in prescribing CHM to that population with hours in class as well as shadow/internship, no matter how informal.  Letter of verification or recommendation from shadow/internship supervising practitioner.

Examples
Galina Roofener, a 2015-2016 member of the NCCAOM Hospital-based Task Force, is a pioneer in this at the Cleveland Clinic.  She also teaches classes on herbal practice safety in the hospital setting. The May 2014 Acupuncture Today article about this clinic by Shellie Rosen, DOM, mentions that requirements also include an "NCCAOM approved course on FDA 'Dispensary and Compounding Guidelines' ".