Regulation of traditional Chinese medical (TCM) practitioners comes under the new National Registration and Accreditation Scheme for health professions.
From July 2012 all acupuncturists, Chinese herbal practitioners and dispensers will fall under the same level of regulation as doctors, optometrists or dentists. Accreditation will be more uniform across the states and registration standards more stringent.
Judy James, chief executive of the Australian Acupuncture and Chinese Medical Association (AACMA) says that the national scheme is well overdue.
“This will have a very positive effect in the long term. At the moment we can not regulate who practises in our own profession. It’s the only way we can impose any standard across our profession as a whole,” says Mrs James.
Under the scheme TCM practitioners will be registered only if they have acquired a four or five university bachelor degree in Australia or an equivalent overseas qualification. Compulsory entry exams will also be imposed for all overseas-qualified practitioners.
“[Now] people can do a three months course and offer their services ... [The national scheme] means that someone can’t just pick up a shingle and hang it and say they are a practitioner after no training or very little training.”
Professor Keryn Phelps, former President of the Australian Medical Association agrees that the lack of regulation has put consumers at risk.
“Consumers need to look whether the practitioner they are seeing is qualified and what qualification they have and make sure that the courses [they completed] are from a recognised institution.”.
Education Important
It is estimated that each year $60 billion is spent worldwide on alternative medicines and at least 50 per cent of Australians have tried some form of herbal treatment.
While there are few reported cases of adverse reactions to natural medicines alone, the danger lies in mixing of pharmaceutical drugs with herbs.
For example, simple therapeutic supplements made from garlic, gingko or ginger, may increase bleeding if taken together with blood thinning agents. A more serious side effect of this could be bleeding in the brain, otherwise known as stroke.
However, sufficient education of the consumer, alternative medicine practitioners and GPs could prevent such cases, says John Baxter from the National Herbalist Association.
“There’s great necessity to educate people about the potential dangers of mixing herbs and drugs, because herbs are therapeutic agents and they can affect the way the body metabolises drugs. It can enhance a drug’s action or it can reduce a drug’s action,” said Mr Baxter in an ABC report.
Meanwhile the Complementary Healthcare Council of Australia (CHC) has slammed the conventional medical practitioners for ignoring the growing trend in natural treatments.
In a statement published by the ABC’s 7.30 Report CHC said that “GPs have been burying their heads in the sand for far too long and should make it their business to improve their knowledge of complementary medicines and potential drug-CM interactions—and to be more open with their patients.”
CHC also stresses the importance of taking only Australian-approved natural remedies that have passed the manufacturing standards set by the Therapeutics Goods Association (TGA).
Consumers should look for packaged medicines which that have an “AUST L” or “AUST R” number on them, which indicates that the ingredients are either listed or registered by the TGA.
