Primary Course Description

The McMaster University Contemporary Medical Acupuncture Program is a 300 hour Continuing Education Program provided by the McMaster University Department of Anesthesia and reviewed by the McMaster University Health Sciences Continuing Education Department.

For 23 years, this Practical Training Program consisted of five, three-day weekend units (126 contact hours) plus a concurrent self-directed home study portion (174 hours).

The Covid-19 pandemic has forced the program to innovate ways of delivering the material and therefore the program has been restructured for 2022 into three In Person Units, two of which are solely practical workshops (Units 2 and 3), in addition to a new online component consisting of three online units that contains the totality of the lectures previously delivered by Dr. Elorriaga in the live Program. Course participants receive access to the online component of each unit at least four weeks prior to the live event. The online component varies between 6 and 8 hours per Unit (less than 30 minutes per day of study time). The credit hours for the online component are equivalent to the live hours corresponding to lectures in the old format.

This is the new Spring 2022 Program:

• Unit 1 Online Parts A & B:  up to March 2nd
• Unit 1 In Person – Introduction & Lower Extremity:  March 3-6, 2022
• Unit 2 Online:  March 7 – April 6, 2022
• Unit 2 In Person – Upper Extremity, Neck and Trunk:  April 7-10, 2022
• Unit 3 Online:  April 11 – June 22, 2022
• Unit 3 In Person – Tying it all together & Review:  June 23-26, 2022

Since its inception, the McMaster University Neurofunctional Acupuncture Program is skills-based and clinically oriented, with about 100 hours devoted to practical workshops including surface anatomy palpation, insertion needling techniques, condition specific blueprint treatment design, special techniques workshops, and real live patient treatment demonstrations.

Since 1998, 46 Main Programs and 63 Advanced Programs have been completed, with over 3,800 Graduates having achieved their learning objectives.