Due to a law enacted this summer, North Carolina increased its minimum massage and bodywork education hours from 500 to 650 to ensure aid-eligible schools can continue to offer certain federal funding to students.
With this increase in hours comes a required change in curriculum—schools must alter their programs to accommodate for the additional 150 hours of education. The Board of Massage and Bodywork Therapy published proposed rules in the North Carolina Register (page 329) that outline suggested changes to curriculum.
If you would like to submit comments in support of, or in opposition to, the proposed rule changes, please email admin@bmbt.org before November 15. ABMP outlines the proposed curriculum below.
School programs must have a core curriculum of at least 650 classroom hours of supervised instruction. The proposed core curriculum would contain the following hours of specific course work:
- 230 hours in theory and practice of massage and bodywork therapy (currently 200 hours)
- 115 hours in this category must be dedicated to hands-on methods (currently 100 hours)
- 100 hours in anatomy and physiology (unchanged)
- 55 hours in kinesiology (new category)
- 45 hours in pathology (new category)
- 20 hours in ethics (currently 15 hours)
- 10 hours in North Carolina massage and bodywork therapy laws and rules (currently grouped with ethics and proposed as a separate category)
- 15 hours in business management (unchanged)
- 25 hours in psychological concepts (currently 20 hours)
- 150 hours in other courses related to the practice of massage and bodywork therapy (unchanged)
In addition, the proposed rules would require programs to be at least 25 weeks in length (an increase from 24 weeks) and for students to attend at least 80 percent of the instructional course hours (an increase from 75 percent).
Comments Due: November 15