• Percent working in the field, full-time vs part-time, hours in practice
• Practice location and characteristics, private versus employment
• Earnings data in the field
• Research activities and scholarly publications
• Professional and academic leadership and teaching assignments

Since the profession first set initial roots in the US, the only viable option upon graduation for nearly three decades was to setup a private practice, which is not easy and may be a reason that some graduates move on to other fields. In recent years, the profession of acupuncture and Oriental medicine has seen an unprecedented surge in career opportunities as well as advocacy and regulation.  In recent years:

• In 2018, acupuncturists were assigned a number by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (29-1199.01) as a distinct subset of “Health diagnosing and treating practitioners, all other,” thus providing a federal validation of the profession.
• From the Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (CCAOM)’s frequently asked questions webpage: “How much do license AOM practitioners earn? Like all professions, salaries vary based on experience, education, specialization, location and many other factors. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) 2018 salary updates, the average annual wages for health diagnosing and treating practitioners is $73,960. Average salaries for AOM practitioners are typically higher than those of some other professionals in the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) field. There are approximately 33,000 AOM practitioners in the U.S. and growth in the next 10 years is estimated to be 10 – 14%.”
• The Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) declared that acupuncture, and other alternative interventions, must be sought early as a nonpharmacological, non-opioid approach to pain management. Similar recommendation was made by the American College of Physicians in 2017.
• The Veterans Administration rolled out an initiative and has created an integrative clinical model that incorporates acupuncture in treatment options for veterans. The VA also identified licensed acupuncturists as the primary practitioners for providing acupuncture services and expanded its hiring of acupuncturists nationwide.
• While some hospitals and allopathic clinics have employed acupuncturists over the years, there is growth of employment opportunities nationwide in this sector of health care settings as easily seen in an internet search.
• Although NCCAOM’s primary function is to certify that individuals are competent to safely practice in the AOM field through administration of board exams, it is also a powerful advocate for the AOM profession. It is currently advocating on several bills and for more research on the efficacy of acupuncture as a nonpharmacological, non-opioid approach to treating chronic pain.
• January 2020, it was announced that Medicare would cover acupuncture for chronic low-back pain.

With the doctoral degrees, other opportunities are unfolding, such as research, teaching, and professional and academic leadership roles. As a result of this changing environment, AOMA is looking beyond collecting data on private clinical practice, and adjusting surveys to look at employment, scholarly work, and leadership.

Over time, AOMA hopes to see growing trends with more graduates staying in the field on a full-time basis and, if as a practitioner, spending more hours each week in practice.

Trends and causative issues regarding student success are identified, analyzed and addressed to provide meaningful assistance to at-risk students, thereby maximizing the number of students graduating from the institution.

However, the quest for prognostic factors for academic success is ongoing in higher education.  While some predictive measures are valuable in assessing the potential academic success of a prospective student, certain factors may adversely affect a student’s ability to complete the program which cannot be measured.  AOMA’s admissions requirements and processes have been effective at selecting applicants who seem to have the aptitude for coursework and degree completion, yet AOMA has identified indeterminate factors that may interfere with program completion, based on historical and current socio-economic factors that may inhibit a potential adult student from successfully completing a program that cannot be determined at time of acceptance.

Schools of higher education, AOM or otherwise, graduate or otherwise, face this issue. Some of these factors include, but are not limited to:

• marriage, divorce, transfer/moving of family to out-of-area
• health issues of self or family
• trauma, death, loss of family member(s)
• pregnancy, childrearing or parent-caring
• financial strains, loss of financial funding
• deciding the profession is not what he/she wanted
• human and natural disasters, acts of God, and so forth

It should be noted that while the age range of AOMA’s student population is diverse, the majority of students are women in their mid-twenties and thirties and may be more prone to some of these life challenges than a younger population.