New Zealand Acupuncture Bachelor Degree Meets International Standards
To be delivered at Auckland and Wellington campuses from 2008
Acupuncture has been practiced as an alternative therapy in New Zealand since the mid 1970s. The New Zealand School of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is an NZAPEP member, has been training acupuncture professionals since 1989 at its Wellington and Auckland campuses. In 2007 the Ministry of Health approved the profession of acupuncture to be a regulated health profession under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003. This means that acupuncture will be classified as a recognised health profession along with Nurses, Dentists, and Chiropractors etc. It is expected that New Zealand will follow the example of other countries by requiring the minimum standard for acupuncture professionals to be a Bachelor degree, probably by 2013.
In a parliamentary press release in 2007, Dr Michael Cullen reported that New Zealand had acceded to the Lisbon Convention on the Recognition of Qualifications. This means that New Zealand Qualifications will now have equivalent status in each of the 50 signatory countries which include Australia, USA, Canada and the United Kingdom. Providing that acupuncturists meet the minimum local national academic requirement, then these countries will no longer require acupuncturists to re-qualify in order to practice in that country.
In 2006 the New Zealand School of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine embarked on its most ambitious project, which was to develop an acupuncture Bachelor degree and have this approved by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA). The school attained its objective when on 1 April 2008 NZQA advised that the school had been authorised to deliver a Bachelor of Health Science (Acupuncture) qualification.
New Zealand acupuncturists will soon be able to gain a Bachelor degree which meets international standards when the New Zealand School of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine commences its four year degree course in 2009. Acupuncturists who currently have a Diploma will soon be able to convert to the Bachelor degree qualification by completing transition examination papers.
The Directors and Staff of the New Zealand School of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine are delighted that several years of hard work has come to fruition. They have received numerous messages of congratulations from the New Zealand Register of Acupuncturists, elsewhere within New Zealand and from overseas. This is the only Acupuncture degree qualification that is available in New Zealand and al- though it is a relatively small Private Training Establishment, their achievement shows that quality education can be achieved in a niche market at an international standard.
NZAPEP congratulates this member on the approval to grant the Degree and sees this as another example of the fine work that members do in the “world” of private education.