How to choose an osteopath?
How to tell a properly trained osteopath from the rest: qualifications, registration and what to ask before you book. Guidance from One Osteo, Malaysia.
Is he actually an osteopath?
In Malaysia, the Traditional and Complementary Medicine branch of the Ministry of Health recognizes osteopathy. However, as of today there is no regulation yet on practice and education, which means anyone can unscrupulously use the title of osteopath to attract patients for business purposes without any consideration for patient’s safety.
How to know then ?
As there is no official register yet for Malaysian osteopath, here are some basic information for you to better understand how to choose an osteopath.
In France, one is qualified as an Osteopath upon completion of a full-time 5-year course. According to the European Standard on Osteopathy, it requires a MINIMUM of 4,800 hours of training including 1,000 hours of supervised clinical practice and training.
What you need to understand
First of all, the tools of an osteopath are his brain, his knowledge, but most of all his hands and sense of touch. Thus, comprehensive osteopathic knowledge is not enough to treat patients. One has to have the manual art of osteopathy in treating a patient. This achieves thousands of hours spent with patients to feel the shapes, textures, mobility of organs and tissues with the guidance of an instructor.
Osteopathy is not a cookbook of techniques. The techniques cannot be isolated, fragmented or separated from the philosophy and holistic approach at their origin. Indeed, a fragment of osteopathy will never deliver what osteopathy as a whole can accomplish.
Conclusion
To conclude, beware of so-called osteopath who have followed short courses, week-end classes or seminar, or even online-courses and a few weeks/months workshops. Indeed, isolated cracking techniques can be dangerous if not properly performed, and this is not osteopathy.
Foreign osteopath :
- Check the name of the school that delivered the certification
- Make sure the number of years of studies is minimum 4
- Look at their specialty: are they trained in cranial osteopathy ? visceral osteopathy ? paediatric osteopathy ?
- Don’t hesitate to ask for references. In fact, someone who has nothing to hide won’t have any problem to provide.
Local Osteopath :
- Same applies, as there is no international training center to become an osteopath apart from One Osteo Academy, local osteopath have either studied abroad and should be able to provide their certification, or they are not real osteopaths.