What to do, when you don't know what to do

Date(s): 22 March 2025

Time: 10am-5pm

Eligibility: Acupuncture graduates

Venue: College of Integrated Chinese Medicine, Reading

No matter how experienced we are there are still lots of times when we have listened to what our patient has to say, taken the pulses and looked at the tongue, and we still don't really know what to do.  It may be because we can't come up with a convincing diagnosis - we all know that sinking feeling we get when we talk ourselves into  a diagnosis rather than believing in it.

Or perhaps we've tried two or three different diagnoses and none of them has worked.  Or it may be that the patient got a lot better with the first few treatments but there's been no improvement since, and we can't work out why.  Or the patient has a long term chronic condition and doing the same points over and over again seems to be an inadequate response. 

And there is the patient and there is the clock which is ticking away, and we have to do something.  So what do we do when we don't know what to do? At times like these we need some strategies we can use quickly and reliably, some principles we can apply some rules of thumb and a few new ways of selecting points.

John has been in practice for over thirty years. He has lectures to the BacC. conference and taught at C.I.C.M and the Northern College of Acupuncture. John have published seven books on acupuncture or related topics, including Acupuncture for New Practitioners, Intuitive Acupuncture, and The Spirit of the Organs.