Question for those doing their clinic hours

[Roberto R]

Hello everyone,

Having finished the course work I've now begun my clinic hours. I only need 50 to be completely finished and on my way to the state boards. I am just wondering how many clinic hours are required in other states and for those who have completed them or in the progress, did you find it wasn't as hard as you thought it might be.

I will admit to some pre clinic jitters. I was nervous to be applying what I have learned on real breathing clients : ). But after my first 10 hour weekend of clinic I can say that it wasn't nearly as foreboding as I had thought it would be. My clients were very satisfied with their sessions and already rebooking for me. The only thing that I'm finding is that being in South Florida most all my clients present with some form of bursitis or slight arthritis or blood pressure issues. I don't think I've had a straight forward patient, though I assume in the real world this will likely be the case as well. I much enjoyed the fast pace of the clinic, the soap notes and just being with clients and knowing that they leave me feeling better then when they got to me.

Basically I'm just wondering how clinic was for you, where ever you are.

Eric

 

[Pompal 09.]

most school clinics are clinical. internships they call them. externship is also required for the school i went too. they average around 64 hrs each. the general public usually don't know about massages at schools. only those into massage as health care usually from chronic pain searching for solutions knows the schools use the public for their interns.

as for the real world. it depends where you work. if it's spa settings, you'll mainly get feel good relax massage unless the business market for clinical which is highly unlikely. the type of clients really depends on who the business cater to. since, your name is eric. i assume your male. if your are, don't be surprise by the sexism you will come across in the field. some from clients who wants female only but mainly it's from those managers/owners hiring the therapist because they think clients only want females. that's cuz they still think massage is pampering and only a female can fulfill that. you won't find many sexism from the therapist folks. of course you might find some sexist male therapist that you can spot out easily because they just stand out due to their way of carrying themselves to only want to work on female clients. especially when you do couples massage and they insist the female client. most often the males who aren't into health or focus on clinical massage, they are the sexist one. the good thing is they don't do good work and will be weed out eventually. personally, i hate males who have impure intentions in this field. they make us honest male therapist look bad and get owners/managers to generalize that males are bad to hire. heard a great more than few males in almost all the spas in my city inappropriately massaging clients. maybe that reinforce the sexism in the hiring process. guess that shows they don't know how to screen bad therapist as I also hear they hire any one male therapist just so they don't deal with sexism remark.

I mainly got clinical type of massage because it was by referrals from clients I work on. however, the spa were mainly getting relax feel good massage as that what the general public knows massage as, being luxury and not preventative care. its also because that's how they portray massage to the public.

eventually if you work at a place long enough you can generate enough returns and referrals to just specialize in clinical work. you know longer depend on spa getting clients because your good enough to get over 50% returns and referrals. that's what happen to me.

unfortunately starting my own practice is a whole another matter with discriminatory laws. it's not easy to branch off oneself to start one's practice with barriers all over the place. hence, I have to start over from scratch. lost lots of clients due to not having office to work on them. business wise, massage is in it's infancy as the laws don't support it yet. not so easy to progress the field when society structural system suppresses it. that's the only way to make money in this field. your own business so you get rid of the middle man and make it affordable for clients. too bad not enough therapist want to go the business route to help the profession flourish as the field is still influence by spa business owners who aren't therapist that don't do justice on the message of massage being preventative care.

 

[nettietheyeti]

At my school, clinic started right away at the second quarter of classes. We had, I think, 65 clinic hours, 24 "outreach" hours (chair massage, off campus but supervised work), some outside massage/research/review-writing hours (I don't remember how many hours of that) and a bazillion classroom massage hours. The first clinic caused a few jitters for everyone, but we had used the clinic rooms for classtime massage practice, so that helped a lot, plus we started when we just knew a good Swedish routine and then continued in clinic throughout the rest of our time in school, so we were able to kind of chart our own progress and the responses of clinic attendees.

Most of us had our clinic hours done by the time our classroom hours were done. They had to be done before graduation, and that was just a few days after the final comprehensive exam.

We had a very good variety of people from the community. There was some "recruiting" of people with many different pathologies just to give students a good many experiences, but they also advertised quite a lot so that anyone in the area would know to take advaneforum.xxxe of it. There were young and old, stressed, injured, diseased, and those who just wanted to relax and enjoy receiving massage.

 

[Smilecahoots]

I had a clinic shift nearly every week for the last 6 months of my training. We saw all kinds of clients and got lots of practice developing our intake, assessment, massage, and charting skills. It was also good for getting us ready to handle multiple clients without a lot of time in between. These clinic hours were in addition to all of the documented work we had to do on other clients outside of class. It was all a great experience, and I had my pick of jobs when I chose to find employment.