Basics of Research Literacy: The Future is Here

The Future is Here: Are You Ready?

Glenath Moyle, president of the American Massage Therapy Association recently declared in her remarks at the National Convention, “Research is our future, and the future is here!”

I agree with her, but I have a concern.  I would declare, “The future is here–and some of us aren’t ready!”

What about you?

Can you discern a good study from a bad one? What do you do to identify how bias might alter a study’s outcomes? How do you feel about navigating Pubmed Central? And are you confident that you can explain the findings of a typical study to your clients?

Research Literacy is a Job Requirement

Following what happens in massage therapy research is part of every massage therapist’s job, whether he or she is working out of a room at home, in a franchise, at a spa, or in an interdisciplinary health care clinic. The reasons for this are many and varied, but here is a short list:

• Research allows us to build on the experiences of others so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel with every client.
• Clients are doing their own background reading; we’d better be able to keep up.
• As a new health care system evolves, massage therapy could have an important place–but without good research, we will be shut out of that opportunity.
• It is vital that massage therapists be able to communicate with researchers, so that studies examine massage as it is truly practiced. Otherwise findings may be useless, or worse, misleading. 
• Poorly executed research gets published; we need to be able to identify it and be clear about why we disagree with it.
• Research, along with client values and practitioner skill, is the basis of evidence-informed practice. It is up to us to find research that is relevant and applicable.

But here’s the problem: many schools don’t teach classes in how to access, evaluate and apply new research. Most massage therapists probably wouldn’t claim that they are confident being self-taught in those skills.

So what do we do?

Wouldn’t it be great if…

Wouldn’t it be great if there were an online course that a person could take in his or her own time?  A course that is more than, “read this—take this test”? A course that helps to build skills in identifying good-quality research articles, accessing them, making sense of them, and applying findings to practice?

Basics of Research Literacy (BRL) is a joint project between the Massage Therapy Foundation and Education Training Solutions. Designed by Whitney Lowe and Jan Schwartz, it is a 6-hour continuing education course about—you guessed it—research literacy. It is self-paced, and anything but passive: you will learn what research is, how to do a literature search, and how to evaluate findings. You will hone your online search skills, including the use of relevant data bases so you can find studies that apply to you and your clients. This is an interactive, skill-building course with no time limit for completion.

Basics of Research Literacy is appropriate for anyone: practitioners, students, educators, and others involved in the massage therapy profession.

Basics of Research Literacy is available now, for an introductory price of $75 for individuals, $65 each for groups of five or more. This is a permanent fundraiser for the Massage Therapy Foundation, offered through Education and Training Solutions.

Basics of Research Literacy is your ticket to the future. Be ready. Check it out.

http://www.educationtrainingsolutions.com/massage-therapy-foundation/

Poster Sessions at AMTA National Convention

Come and visit the 14th annual Poster Session at the AMTA National Convention in Portland, OR this week! The poster sessions are brought to you by the MTF annually.

Replacing the "A-Ha" with a "Hmmm"

I will admit this: Teaching massage research is fun. And not just because everyone likes you for it  [laughs nervously] or because you make tons of money doing it [laughs then begins inwardly sobbing]. Teaching research is fun for exactly two reasons:

1) You get to talk about the science itself, which is awesome and inspiring.  (See: Awesome, Inspiring)

2) You get to see students deepen their thinking on important questions in bodywork.

But here’s the rub: when “Research” is in the title of your class or workshop, you often begin with a headwind. First is the misconception is that “science is for the scientists.” That it’s a distant profession done by a very different kind of person. Next comes the notion that the practice of science is somehow incompatible with bodywork. That you can’t capture the essence of bodywork through scientific means. (Who ever said science could capture the essence of anything?)

2012 Student Case Report Contest

The Massage Therapy Foundation is delighted to invite you to participate in our Student Case Report Contest. This contest fosters an opportunity for students to develop research skills by conducting their own research case report in which they will summarize their results in the format of a professional research paper. Top-rated reports will receive recognition in the way of publication opportunities and cash rewards. This educational event also provides research acclaim for the host schools.

Four Essential Skills for Research Literacy

Uncertainty abounds in the future of our work, but I’m convinced of at least one thing: the massage profession 20 years from now will need to be research literate. This is true regardless of modality or business model – research literacy will be as important to career longevity as body mechanics or business skills.
 
When I say this to a group of massage educators, they mostly agree, but each will offer a healthy dose of realism. Like all educators, they contend with scarce resources, bureaucratic stasis, and willful students.  Moreover, most massage teachers feel they lack the research literacy that they’re supposed to instill in students. So it’s one thing to trumpet the need for research literacy, but quite another to create it.
 
What do we mean by research literacy, anyway? What abilities – if we saw them in every massage school graduate — would constitute success?  I suggest these four essential skills as a worthy goal for every massage school.  We should ensure that every graduate has the ability to: