If the AMPs business card read Holistic healer Extraordinaire BSc, what would I want that BSc to be in? Would I be unreasonable to be sceptical about her healing powers if she had a BSc in geology or applied mathematics?
The first thing that I would like to say is that in order for it to be credible, it must definitely not be a soft option. I do not want someone who is in this, because they failed medical school. The person must have been taught what ailments are absolutely definitely better treated by conventional medicine. It would be stupid eg to die of something that could be cured using antibiotics. They must had done a first aid course or refresher course recently. Dying in an AMPs consulting room would just be too humiliating.
I would want the person to have learned about clinical trials and have the tools to understand the results in medical journals. One of the criticisms regarding alternative medicine relates to the pausity of positive clinical trial data. This might mean that the treatments do not stand up to too much scrutiny, but it also might mean that people have yet to find good solutions to the unique problems eg the difficulty in getting good placebos for acupuncture treatments.
There are a lot of conventional science courses that exist that would be appropriate in an Alternative Medicine BSc eg Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Statistics and Clinical Biochemistry. That is, it could be a real BSc. There are a few special subjects that this person might need to do that are not in a normal BSc, like ethics, legal considerations and the history and of course the practice of their specialty, but I could envision a curriculum requiring an extra year of study plus a year of supervised practical experience that I would still consider deserving of the title BSc and fulfilling the requirement of preparing the person for practicing their chosen profession.
The question of whether a person needs a BSc to comfort a patient through a difficult period of their life which is producing psychosomatic symptoms is obviously a different thing completely.
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TxReadability
1. Readability Scores
* Flesch Reading Ease: 41.58
* Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 14.96 (interpret your scores)
How are the Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch Kincaid Grade Level scores calculated?
2. Statistical Information
* Total words: 395
* Total words sampled: 395
Why don't 'Total words' match 'Total words sampled'?
* Number of sentences: 16
* Average number of syllables per 100 words: 1.59
* Average sentence length (number of words per sentence): 30.18
* 1-syllable words sampled: 271
* 2-syllable words sampled: 48
* 3+-syllable words sampled: 76
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Google
Counts
Words: 395
Characters (no spaces): 1903
Characters (with spaces): 2297
Paragraphs: 6
Sentences: 16
Pages (approximate): 1
Readability
Average sentences per paragraph: 2.67
Average words per sentence: 24.69
Average characters per word: 4.82
Average words per page: 395.00
Flesch Reading Ease: [?] 47.70
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: [?] 13.00
Automated Readability Index: [?] 14.00
What I started with:
BSc (Alternative Medicine)
Let’s assume for argument’s sake that (1) I was the type of person to got to an Alternative Medicine Practitioner (AMP) and (2) it was important to me that the AMP had had some sort of formal tertiary education or training.
If the AMP’s business card read: “Holistic healer Extraordinaire B.Sc.”, what would I want that BSc to be in? Would I be unreasonable to be sceptical about her healing powers if she had a BSc in geology or applied mathematics?
The first thing that I would like to say is that in order for it to be credible, it must definitely not be a “soft option”: I don’t want someone who is in this, because they failed medical school. The person must have been taught what ailments are absolutely definitely better treated by “conventional medicine” – it would be stupid e.g. to die of something that could be cured using antibiotics. And they must had done a first aid course/refresher course recently – dying in an AMPs consulting room would just be too humiliating.
I would want the person to have learned about clinical trials and have the tools to understand the results in medical journals. One of the criticisms regarding alternative medicine relates to the pausity of “positive” clinical trial data. This might mean that the treatments don’t stand up to too much scrutiny, but it also might mean that people have yet to find good solutions to the “unique” problems e.g. the difficulty in getting good “placebos” for acupuncture treatments.
There are a lot of conventional science courses that exist that would be appropriate in an Alternative Medicine BSc. e.g. Anatomy, Physiology, Chemistry, Statistics, Clinical Biochemistry. That is, it could be a real BSc. There are a few special subjects that this person might need to do that are not in a normal BSc, like ethics, legal considerations and the history and of course the practice of their specialty, but I could envision a curriculum requiring an extra year of study plus a year of “supervised practical experience” that I would still consider deserving of the title BSc and fulfilling the requirement of preparing the person for practicing their chosen profession.
The question of whether a person needs a BSc to comfort a patient through a difficult period of their life which is producing psychosomatic symptoms is obviously a different thing completely.