Naturopaths Recognized in Alberta

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by troutman

A question off the naturopathic licensing exam (NPLEX)

http://www.naturopathicdiaries.com/o...edium=facebook

VITAL SIGNS: His temperature is 101.5° F (38.6° C), heart rate is 120 bpm, and respiratory rate is 60/min and gasping.
2. Which of the following homeopathic preparations would best address his clinical presentation?
a. spongia tosta
b. aconitum napellus
c. cuprum metallicum
d. drosera rotundifolia

This child appears to have a moderate to severe case of croup: he has a fever and is gasping for air. This is a medical emergency. The correct answer is “call 9-1-1.” That is the standard of care.

Yet, for a child struggling to breathe, the naturopaths who wrote the NPLEX decided that homeopathy — an incontrovertibly debunked placebo therapy — is a valid choice. The naturopathic standard is to choose magic over medicine.

Overall, naturopathic students are required to get only 850 hours of clinical training on patients. Physicians earn tens of thousands of hours before practicing. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants get more than twice as much training as naturopaths by the numbers, and it is spent studying proven medicine, not imaginative treatments.

Unreal.

[GGG]

Physicians don't have 10s of thousands of hours before practicing. They really shouldn't use hyperbole when debunking myths.

I also don't like that they say the fact that it is a placebo therefore it shouldn't be prescribed. For most conditions people go to a doctor for a placebo is probably the correct treatment. They are proven to work on most illnesses which don't require treatment so we should use them more instead of over prescription of anti biotics.

That said the answer to that question is ridiculous.

[TheSutterDynasty]

Originally Posted by GGG

Physicians don't have 10s of thousands of hours before practicing. They really shouldn't use hyperbole when debunking myths.

I also don't like that they say the fact that it is a placebo therefore it shouldn't be prescribed. For most conditions people go to a doctor for a placebo is probably the correct treatment. They are proven to work on most illnesses which don't require treatment so we should use them more instead of over prescription of anti biotics.

That said the answer to that question is ridiculous.

You want to walk into a Doctor's office when you're feeling ill and for them to tell you that something works really well when in reality it doesn't work at all?

That's not good in any specialty.

[cracher]

Originally Posted by GGG

Physicians don't have 10s of thousands of hours before practicing. They really shouldn't use hyperbole when debunking myths.

Hyperbole???

Not counting school at all, only residency. I put in 60-70 hours a week and this IS NOT counting the hours spent preparing weekly noon-conference presentations, bi-weekly M&M slideshows, reading up before cases, prepping for stupid licensing steps. Granted, chief year was lighter, roughly 40h qweek. I'm not good at math, but I can tell you that is easily a 5 digit number in hours over the 4 years.

[NuclearFart]

Originally Posted by GGG

Physicians don't have 10s of thousands of hours before practicing. They really shouldn't use hyperbole when debunking myths.


That said the answer to that question is ridiculous.

What are you basing your statement on??? Ignoring all the post secondary training that takes place in the class room, the last 1.5 year of med school is all clinical training and then many do a specialist residency of 5 or more years.

Clerkship = 8hours * 5days * 50 weeks * 1.5 years = 3000 hours
Specialist Residency = 10 hours * 5 days * 48 weeks * 5 years = 12000 hours.

......~15000 hours of clinical training before independent practice.

This even ignores countless hours spent on call, and the extra fellowship year(s) (~Fellowship = 10 hours * 5 days * 50 weeks = 2500 hours) done by many specialists if they want a job in a major city.

Get your facts straight if you want to debunk a "myth".

[CaptainCrunch]

Yeah I know that my sister did ludicris hours during school residency and even after that. Yes you get paid great to be a actual for real doctor, but the hours you put in to be successful are crazy.

[4X4]

Sorry, that's not TENS of thousands. Barely pushing 20,000 hours there, NF.
If you want to be legit, you need to sound legit. Try translating all your remedies into latin. It worked for Harry Potter and his magic spells. You doctors could learn a thing or two here.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GGG

Physicians don't have 10s of thousands of hours before practicing. They really shouldn't use hyperbole when debunking myths.

I also don't like that they say the fact that it is a placebo therefore it shouldn't be prescribed. For most conditions people go to a doctor for a placebo is probably the correct treatment. They are proven to work on most illnesses which don't require treatment so we should use them more instead of over prescription of anti biotics.

That said the answer to that question is ridiculous.

Most conditions cannot be treated successfully by placebo.


Fact

[troutman]

Is “harnessing the power of placebo” worthwhile to treat anything?

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org...reat-anything/

CAM advocates move the goalposts and claim that CAM works through the “power of placebo” and do their best to claim that “harnessing” that “power of placebo” is a justification to use their treatments. It turns out, however, that when placebo effects are examined rigorously there’s just not a lot of there there, so to speak. Results are underwhelming, and trying to “harness the power of placebo” without an intervention that actually impacts the pathophysiology of disease can even be dangerous. That’s not to say that learning to maximize placebo responses (whatever they are) while administering effective medical treatments isn’t important; rather, it’s to point out that, by themselves, placebo effects are not of much value.

First, as we have tried to explain time and time again here, there is no single “placebo effect.” There are placebo effects. Second, the only really correct reference to “the placebo response” or “placebo effect” is the outcome measured in the placebo arm of a clinical trial. The problem is that, all too often, discussions of placebo responses conflate the placebo effect measured in a clinical trial with all the other various placebo effects that add up to the response that is measured in that trial. Those effects include reporting biases, researcher biases, regression to the mean, conditioning, and many other components that contribute to what is measured in the outcome of a clinical trial. Another common misconception about placebo effects is that they are somehow “mind over matter,” that we can heal ourselves (or at least reduce our symptoms) through the power of will and mind. This is not true. Placebo effects are not the power of positive thinking.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Most conditions cannot be treated successfully by placebo.


Fact

I should say most complaints people go to the doctor for require no treatment as the body will heal itself. Therefore a placebo is as an effective of a treatment as anything else in these cases.

So while most conditions can't be treated by a placebo most complaints can.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GGG

I should say most complaints people go to the doctor for require no treatment as the body will heal itself. Therefore a placebo is as an effective of a treatment as anything else in these cases.

So while most conditions can't be treated by a placebo most complaints can.

Is that ethical then? I'll let the doctors chime in here, but most non serious visits require assessment to ensure it's a self limiting illness. If it's self limiting, then that would be communicated to the patient rather than lie to them and will them something, no?



I don't believe most doctors visits are unnecessary. Many are, but far from most I would presume. I deal with family physicians many times every day and there aren't any professions I know of with that level of integrity

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by GGG

I should say most complaints people go to the doctor for require no treatment as the body will heal itself. Therefore a placebo is as an effective of a treatment as anything else in these cases.

So while most conditions can't be treated by a placebo most complaints can.

I don't even know if Doctors do the placebo thing anymore, because its an incredibly easy thing to get sued over if they make a mistake.

ie

I was in incredible personal pain in my naughty bits and the doctor gave me feakin sugar pills Get me the cheaper Spanish version of Ray the Hammer Shapiro on the line.

for the most part doctors are just telling you that there is nothing to prescribe for this situation and to go home, because they don't want to promote drug dependency.


I could also see a drug program, or insurance carrier losing their s%%% when they're billed $500.00 for a bottle of childrens chewable gummy bear candy.

I know with one doctor in the family, that she laughed about the whole giving a placebo thing to a patient in in the same breath told me that they don't prescribe leaches for diseased blood nor bottles of coke for tummy aches anymore.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by NuclearFart

What are you basing your statement on??? Ignoring all the post secondary training that takes place in the class room, the last 1.5 year of med school is all clinical training and then many do a specialist residency of 5 or more years.

Clerkship = 8hours * 5days * 50 weeks * 1.5 years = 3000 hours
Specialist Residency = 10 hours * 5 days * 48 weeks * 5 years = 12000 hours.

......~15000 hours of clinical training before independent practice.

This even ignores countless hours spent on call, and the extra fellowship year(s) (~Fellowship = 10 hours * 5 days * 50 weeks = 2500 hours) done by many specialists if they want a job in a major city.

Get your facts straight if you want to debunk a "myth".

I was basing on 3yr residency plus 1yr schooling for 8-10 thousand hours.

10s of thousands of hours for all doctors or just specialists? it didn't say that specialists require 10s of thousands of hours. It said doctors. And 15,000 is not 10s of thousands. It is 1.5 10 thousands so even for specialists it's barely true. It's intended to exaggerate the number of hours required instead of being precise.

When providing skeptical commentary it's important to be precise and not exaggerate a claim.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist

Is that ethical then? I'll let the doctors chime in here, but most non serious visits require assessment to ensure it's a self limiting illness. If it's self limiting, then that would be communicated to the patient rather than lie to them and will them something, no?

I don't believe most doctors visits are unnecessary. Many are, but far from most I would presume. I deal with family physicians many times every day and there aren't any professions I know of with that level of integrity

I would agree that it is likely unethical for a doctor to prescribe a fake antibiotic.
What are your thoughts these days on the over prescription of antibiotics? Is it still an issue or has additional education reduced prescription rates?

[calf]

Would it be better to say at least 10 times the number of hours? Does that get across that real Doctors receive significantly more training hours than naturopaths?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by calf

Would it be better to say at least 10 times the number of hours? Does that get across that real Doctors receive significantly more training hours than naturopaths?

Yes it would. Though in some jurisdictions that might not be true for example Alberta Family doctors only require a 2 year residency so you might not quite get to 8000 plus hours including your school time.

I really don't like hyperbole in any kind of article designed to attack pseudo-science/

[corporatejay]

To be fair, the amount of clinical hours for a naturopath is kind of irrelevant. I mean if they had 14,000 hours of bull#### training it wouldn't make their treatment any less ineffective.

[NuclearFart]

Originally Posted by GGG

I was basing on 3yr residency plus 1yr schooling for 8-10 thousand hours.

10s of thousands of hours for all doctors or just specialists? it didn't say that specialists require 10s of thousands of hours. It said doctors. And 15,000 is not 10s of thousands. It is 1.5 10 thousands so even for specialists it's barely true. It's intended to exaggerate the number of hours required instead of being precise.

When providing skeptical commentary it's important to be precise and not exaggerate a claim.

Well about 50% of doctors are specialists. As myself and Cracher alluded to, my number also doesn't include the 1000's of hours on call, teaching, attending rounds, journal club, etc. which is all mandatory clinical training outside of the the standard hours. Furthermore, the classroom component often has 1-2 days a week spent with hands on patients, or joining docs in the clinic/hospital. Once you add it all up, I think 20,000+ hours of hands-on clinical training is rather accurate.

Sounds like you are more embroiled in semantics here, which is ironic because this particular statement is far from the definition of hyperbole.

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by GGG

I would agree that it is likely unethical for a doctor to prescribe a fake antibiotic.
What are your thoughts these days on the over prescription of antibiotics? Is it still an issue or has additional education reduced prescription rates?

Over prescribing is still an issue, but prescribing antibiotics is a small, small piece of the doctors role

[GGG]

Originally Posted by NuclearFart

Well about 50% of doctors are specialists. As myself and Cracher alluded to, my number also doesn't include the 1000's of hours on call, teaching, attending rounds, journal club, etc. which is all mandatory clinical training outside of the the standard hours. Furthermore, the classroom component often has 1-2 days a week spent with hands on patients, or joining docs in the clinic/hospital. Once you add it all up, I think 20,000+ hours of hands-on clinical training is rather accurate.

Sounds like you are more embroiled in semantics here, which is ironic because this particular statement is far from the definition of hyperbole.

My problem isn't a semantic one.

Pseudoscience continually uses bad data to try to make points. For example in a measles outbreak they will state 1/2 of all people who got measles were vaccinated and state that vaccines don't work. Because they ignore the populations of vaccinated people vs non vaccinated people.

Here you have 800 hours of clinical work on patients required by the naturopath comparing it to 10s of thousands required by doctors. This comparison should not be made unless its true in all cases. If they wanted to refer to specialists then refer to specialists.

Really the comparison shouldn't be made because is stating that a clinical hour of a doctor is somehow equal to a clinical hour of a naturopath. And it implies that a lack of clinical hours is the problem with licensing naturopaths.

The problem is nothing they do is science based.