Massage & Fitness Magazine 2019 Winter 2019 | Page 32

It Takes

Informed consent is sometimes not used in massage practices, and it is an important element to provide safety for our clients and patients and run an ethical practice.

By Beret Loncar, RMT, LMT

n 2013, I opened a clinic in New York City based on my experiences in the Canadian health care system working as an registered massage therapist (RMT). The reason for my opening was fairly simple: there was nowhere for me to work using the information I had been taught, and I felt that the Canadian standard had a lot to offer in terms of better treatment and critical thinking. For the first six months, I worked there alone, setting the foundation for the budding company.

The Canadian education has not only a very clear scope for massage therapists, but also a very clear and detailed standard of practice, which includes and encourages critical thinking. In hiring new therapists, I knew there would be challenges in adopting this method of treatment with those who had never been through the program I attended. Before I could encourage therapists to be critical thinking machines everyday, there were some fundamental things I would need to change to set the stage for the process. If massage therapists are going to make sound decisions based on evidence and questioning, they must have the ability to perform those tasks physically before we even get to the skill of it.

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