Massage therapists face bureaucratic hurdles to licensure - Times Union

[massage]

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  Pam O'Dea has been trying for more than a year to get her NYS massage therapist license despite decades of experience.
  
  
  Pam O'Dea has been trying for more than a year to get her NYS massage therapist license despite decades of experience.
  
  Photo: Pam O'Dea

Photo: Pam O'Dea


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Pam O'Dea has been trying for more than a year to get her NYS massage therapist license despite decades of experience.


Pam O'Dea has been trying for more than a year to get her NYS massage therapist license despite decades of experience.

Photo: Pam O'Dea

Massage therapists face bureaucratic hurdles to licensure


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TILLSON — When Pam O’Dea relocated from Northern California to New York it was because she had met someone online, the relationship clicked and she wanted to be with him. “We hit it off and I moved in,” she said.


Transferring her massage therapist’s license from her native Canada or San Francisco should have been the easy part, she thought, with more than 25 years of experience and approximately twice the training that is required in New York.


But 15 months after her September 2017 move, she’s still struggling to understand and navigate the process of getting a New York state license after what she believes has been a series of contradictory instructions, lost files, and incomprehensible delays from the state Education Department’s Office of the Professions, which oversees licensing and certifications for a wide array of professions.


“I applied last September and am still frustrated trying to win my license,” said O’Dea. “It’s like a maze where every path you go down is a dead end.”


Part of the problem is related to her residences. O’Dea attended massage school in Toronto, Ontario, in the 1990s, worked there for a while and then moved to San Francisco. She’s also worked in her native province of Nova Scotia, where she is still licensed.


That license, however, isn’t transferable she’s was told, since Nova Scotia doesn’t require exams, like Ontario.


“I unwittingly interpreted the requirement to have training, exam and current license in the same ‘state, country or territory’ incorrectly. I assumed I was eligible if all three were from the same country, Canada, but have been informed that they must all be from the same province,” she said.


That’s despite the 2,200 hours of training she had, compared to the 1,000 hours required in New York.


There were other problems. When her Toronto school, the Sutherland-Chan School of Massage Therapy, sent her transcripts, SED said they couldn’t find them even though the school said they were sent twice.


On the third try, when they were sent via return receipt mail, they were located, said O’Dea.


The same thing happened with her First Aid and CPR certification, another requirement, which was also found after she sent it a second time via return receipt.


In another instance, an SED evaluator appeared to have been confused by a note from O’Dea indicating she had more than the requisite 150 hours in a given subject area. O’Dea used a > sign, which is commonly used medical shorthand for “more than.”


Education Department officials said they can’t, by law, comment on a specific licensee’s application.


“In general, a person who is licensed in another jurisdiction may apply for licensure by endorsement. If they can document practice for specific periods of time under licensure without disciplinary action in the jurisdiction and has met specific education requirements, the New York State examination is not required,” they said.


O’Dea isn’t alone in her struggle.


The Times Union in 2012 profiled another therapist, who after moving to the state from Rhode Island, struggled for 13 months before getting her license.


“This is pretty normal. I went through the same thing,” said Beret Kirkeby, a New York City massage therapist who also moved to the U.S. from Ontario almost a decade ago.


“They are just checking boxes … but if you don’t fit the cookie cutter, you don’t fit,” she said.


Kirkeby also explained that in Canada, massage therapy is more integrated into other forms of medical care, not unlike the way physical therapists work in the U.S.


To be licensed in Ontario, she added, one needs to pass a fairly extensive written test but, just as importantly, give a live demonstration of their skills.


In New York, the requirement is confined to paperwork.


“There is a certain amount of bureaucracy. It’s not necessarily about the quality of education but they want to see exactly this one thing. If you deviate from that they don’t know what to do with it,” she said.


Kirkeby said she encountered obstacles that were similar to those facing O’Dea. For example, like O’Dea, SED wanted to see the entire test that the Ontario licensing agency gave her. But the province wouldn’t do that, since it would amount to giving away the answers.


Because massage therapy is used more in Canada, the field has a fairly large lobbying presence, which also helps, she said.


In the U.S., regulators are extra cautious about massage therapy, in part because they don’t want it to be confused with illicit activities or prostitution that can sometimes take place under the heading of a (non health-care) massage, said James Specker, director of government relations for the American Massage Therapy Association.


He added that New York has some of the U.S.’s most stringent licensing requirements.


New York and Nebraska both require 1,000 hours of training, he said. While less than the 2,200 required in Ontario, it’s more than other states.


Even those who are already licensed face bureaucratic barriers, though.


Specker said his organization is proposing legislation that would, for instance, allow therapists to get continuing education credits in schools or course offered in neighboring New England states.


For now, O’Dea is continuing to seek her New York license – while still maintaining her Nova Scotia license in case she needs to go there in order to work. She’s also trying to get approved for the next state test which wouldn’t be until August. Even that is challenge, though, since she still has to prove that she has had the needed hours of training.


“It is bizarre,” she said of the process.


rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU


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[Robert N]

Sounds great. ...its a good job massage has a strong effect on the body physically and mentally everyone surprised at just how much it can be help to us .