I recently had a conversation with someone who was using the title "Doctor of Oriental Medicine" because they had a New Mexico license which allows this. She became angry when I suggested this was inappropriate. Several states have similar laws or variation on this title, such as Florida's use of Acupuncture Physician. I am curious as to peoples thoughts on this. It is my opinion that utilizing this term is misleading and irresponsible. I say this for several reasons:
1. We are the only profession that by license can do this
2. Unless you have an actual clinical doctorate in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine then you are not a Doctor. I do have a DAOM from Bastyr so granted I am biased but, there is a difference in having an additional 2-3 years of clinical and research training.
3. By using the title, it creates an expectation in both the patient and other providers that that level has been achieved.
4. Other professions distinguish between clinical doctorates and PhD's. I am also currently a Nurse Practitioner student and have seen confusion in the hospital resulting from misuse of the term "Doctor". Most Doctoral prepared nurses, pharmacists and Physical Therapists who utilize the term doctor, do so by specifying their role. The distinguish themselves from MD's. The important point here however is that they are doctoral prepared!
5. Oriental Medicine at the Masters Level is an Allied Health role. It provides good and needed care but, the use of the term "Doctor" implies more skill, more training and an expectation of care that is often not distinguishable by patients.
6. Arbitrary use of the term destroys credibility in a profession that is not the standard paradigm in the USA. It also is disrespectful of the people who have spent considerable time, effort and money to additional study.
7. On a system level scale, it is important to differentiate levels of providers and training. We do not want to encounter the problems Naturopaths face in unlicensed states where people with mail order degrees can call themselves Naturopathic Physicians.
8. Oriental Medicine (although a complete and, in my opinion great medical system) in the USA has not followed China, Japan and Korea in its level of education and practice and as such is not comparable to "Doctors" from those countries.
9. As more schools and practitioners advance their training it is necessary to be able to distinguish people at that level who also likely have specialized skills or areas of expertise. We already see this confusion by practitioners claiming specialized field for which there is no oversight.
Generally this is a common practice as evident by reading any journal or AOM paper. Many authors and lecturers utilize doctor in their title or bio yet further investigation reveals this is a title only. Are we that insecure professionally that this is necessary? Are practitioners so blinded by their belief systems that they disregard the amount of training and experience required by any doctor in any field to attain that title?
We have seen this discussion around other topics such as increasing education requirements, creating entry level doctorates, allowing masters in acupuncture only, specialty boards and increasing the biomedical sciences in academic curriculum. I find it interesting that often there is opposition to these suggestions and changes yet many of these same people want to use the title doctor or lobby for increased scope of practice.
I look forward to reading people's thoughts. I created a poll for yes/no responses under the "polls" section.
Joined: 2007-12-06