preview

Massage Therapy

Better Essays

MASSAGE IN THE PEDIATRIC POPULATION
The use of complementary alternative medical therapies (CAM) is increasing in incidence in the pediatric population. CAM is a division of a more broad area of medicine that is known as integrative medicine. This type of medicine’s main focus is on the person as a whole. CAM offers a variety of practices that can be applied to pediatrics. It is imperative that pediatric providers have at least some knowledge and information on different CAM treatments that are available. It is likely that patients and families will come to their providers with questions about these therapies as well as the fact that one day, these providers may need to incorporate CAM therapies into their patients’ plans of treatment. There …show more content…

Those who are considered safe to do so are licensed massage therapists and parents at home who were trained by a medical massage therapist. Some institutions will also have nurses specifically trained in massage therapy that can provide this treatment to their patients (Kemper, Vohra, and Walls, 2008). Although massage has relatively low risks, it is important that massage therapy, especially the types that are more deep tissue related, be administered by a trained individual. Adverse reactions to massage have been noted in circumstances where the massage was delivered by a non-licensed person or by using techniques that are too rigorous (Hughes et al., …show more content…

If a therapy shows evidence of danger or is ineffective and has the chance of causing harm to my patients, education must be provided to the parents. Of course, the way to handle this is to never start off being judgmental or reprimanding in any way. Simply stating the evidence and outlining the potential harmful side effects to the parents should be a starting place for discussing any CAM treatments that are unsafe. If a family continues to be resistant to this type of conversation, further action may need to be taken (AAP,

Get Access