Overview

Discover how you can use acupressure to support symptom relief and wellbeing. In this course, you will learn how acupressure, which is a time-honored healing technique rooted in East Asian Medicine, can become a practical, effective tool in your clinical practice and self-care strategies. Acupressure Essentials is a self-paced, experiential course designed to teach basic principles and applications for symptom management including pressure points for pain, headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances, and wellbeing. By the end of the course, you will be able to demonstrate acupoint protocols, demonstrate an acupressure treatment session, and determine a plan of action for incorporating acupressure into your professional practice and self-care routines. Continuing Education Credits This course has been designed to meet Minnesota Board of Nursing continuing education requirements for 15 contact hours and may be eligible for CE credit from other professional boards that allow self-documenting of continuing education activities. It is your responsibility to check with your regulatory board to confirm this course meets your local requirements and, if necessary, to provide them with the certificate of completion you get if you pay for and fulfill all the requirements of this course.

Syllabus

Clinical Acupressure Fundamentals

The first module is Clinical Acupressure Fundamentals. Our goal is to establish a context you can use to incorporate acupressure into clinical patient care. We’ll review basic concepts of East Asian Medicine (EAM), discuss the mechanism of action for acupressure and the state of the research evidence base for acupoint therapies, and start exploring strategies for adding acupressure to your professional practice. You’ll also get a chance to begin practicing some basic acupressure techniques.

Acupressure for Pain

This week, we are focusing on acupressure for pain. You’ll learn acupoints and protocols for managing headache, jaw, sinus, neck, shoulder, back, and abdominal pain. Illustrated guides and tutorial videos will give you step-by-step instructions that you can follow at your own pace. Use your judgment to identify the most relevant pieces for your patients and apply them to the life that you're already living and in the practice that you already have.

Acupressure for Gastrointestinal Disturbances & Acupressure for Wellbeing

In this module our hands-on exploration of acupressure continues. We’ll shift our focus to acupoints and protocols for gastrointestinal disturbances (constipation, diarrhea, and nausea/dyspepsia) and wellbeing (anxiety, depressed mood, insomnia, and fatigue). In addition to the protocols you are learning, targeted massage is another way to introduce acupressure into your practice. Megan demonstrates a few clinical scenarios where she uses massage to stimulate multiple relaxation-promoting acupoints on a patient in the space of 5-15 minutes.

Bringing Acupressure into Your Professional Practice

Your goal this week is to create a plan of action for incorporating acupressure into your professional practice and self-care routines. Guided activities will help you identify your next steps. You’ll also hear a variety of clinicians speak about their successes and challenges in using acupressure with patients.