In early June, I had the honor of being invited to participate in the creation of a state-based palliative-care coalition. It was an excellent two days of meetings and synergies and collaboration . . . for mainstream providers. The vacuum that existed around integrative practitioners and their incorporation in care is not unique; it’s endemic.

Many of the people I spoke with shared excitedly, “Some of our nurses have some massage training” or “We have a great volunteer who does that.” When asked about the volunteer’s training, they would respond with surprise, “Is our volunteer a massage therapist? Hmm . . . I don’t actually know.”

We have some work to do to advance the practice of massage therapy in this space. We have to move beyond modalities within the profession and in our outward-facing engagements. I feel that most of us, massage therapists or not, are talking about the act of rubbing when we talk about the value of massage. (Yes, we massage therapists may be talking about a specialized kind of rubbing based on specific training and knowledge of anatomy, but we’re still thinking and talking primarily about our hands and what we can do with them.)

As massage therapists and bodyworkers, it’s time to advocate for being more than people who rub; we have to show ourselves to be practitioners whose hands are the very tip of an outcome-improving iceberg. Absolutely, nurses should be offering kind touch to their patients. Volunteers too. But health care and the people who consume it need practitioners who can competently practice the essentially important discipline of massage therapy.

And as massage therapists and bodyworkers, we must also know, believe, and talk about the reality that we bring exponentially more than is often considered when talking about massage. The value of our presence does lie partly in the work our actual hands do when we interact with a patient’s or client’s skin and nervous system, but a perspective that focuses on that aspect is unable to create a career path for massage therapists as health-care providers.

Our research sights need to turn toward measuring the value of the practitioner and not the modality. What if we start asking what happens when a provider enters the clinical space with the freedom and skill to practice within the broad scope of their own varied and previously unrepresented discipline? When a massage therapist is integrated and empowered to bring to bear all the skill and competency they possess and to demonstrate sound clinical decision making and a developed ability to collaborate with other providers, then we’re not talking about something “anybody can do.” We’re talking about introducing a provider who can not only offer a unique intervention, but who can also augment the standard of care in a responsible, clinically appropriate way that adds measurable value. It is measurable, but we’re not measuring it.

We can say with relative confidence that massage therapy (or rubbing) decreases anxiety and pain. In some cases, it may lessen nausea or improve sleep. And these outcomes have been demonstrated in many studies, with rigid, step-by-step protocols and with the touch provided by nonmassage therapists. Yes, there are studies that have been conducted with massage therapists and with less rigid protocols, but they are not the norm, and they do not highlight the value of the practitioner.

If 10 years from now studies have been designed and executed to measure the effect massage therapists can have on lessening the care burden on family caregivers and nurses, I will dance the most exuberantly elated jig. When we start measuring the value of the incorporation of skilled massage therapists in decreasing staff turnover in hospital and clinic staff, we’ll be getting somewhere.

There is real potential to show that meaningful integration of massage therapists can lessen the need for rescue doses of pain medication or regularly prescribed sleep aids, and it’s time to realize that potential. Massage therapists will move solidly out of the “nice to have” category of health-care provider and into the “must have” on par with speech therapy, social work, and occupational therapy only when we show that to be true. And this is our work to do.

You can be a part of this change, no matter where you practice. Get curious about how you talk about what you do, regardless of your practice setting. Think about the value you bring beyond your hands, and talk with others about it. Push our research organizations and funders to move beyond mechanistic, protocol-based measurements of massage that mirror trials designed to measure the effect of medications.

Massage therapists provide an experiential, multifaceted, psychosocial intervention unlike any other that is currently available in health care. Let’s stop hiding behind our hands.

 Cal Cates is an educator, writer, and speaker on topics ranging from massage therapy in the hospital setting to end-of-life care and massage therapy policy and regulation. A founding director of the Society for Oncology Massage from 2007–2014 and current executive director and founder of Healwell, Cates works within and beyond the massage therapy community to elevate the level of practice and integration of massage overall and in health care specifically. Cates also is the co-creator of the podcasts Massage Therapy Without Borders and Interdisciplinary.