What Is The Council On Naturopathic Medical Education?
In North America, naturopathic medicine is not considered "real" medicine by the public and by a lot of conventional doctors. Many people have been victims of one scam or another throughout their lifetimes and don't want to get caught up in any medical scams. Sometimes people think that the best way to not get scammed by any alternative medical practitioner is to never go to one. The Council on Naturopathic Medical Education seeks to promote naturopathy as a legitimate medical field.
Brief History
The Council on Naturopathic Medical Education was founded in 1978 and has since become the standard setters for North American naturopathy. You cannot practice naturopathy unless you have the right education. The Council on Naturopathic Medical Education is the organizing body that awards accreditation to all naturopathy educational programs in North America.
Voluntary Information
There really isn't any legislation forcing colleges or universities offering naturopathic degrees to follow any standards. All of that is currently self-regulated within the industry. Although some quacks have slipped through the cracks, on the whole the voluntary nature of naturopathic education accreditation is getting better and better.
It takes a lot of money to get a naturopathy degree and those with degrees want the public to be confident that they earned those degrees through hard work and medical study. Any naturopathic practitioner is required to have at least graduated from medical school - which is in and of itself a really expensive and time-consuming education. But just graduating from a legitimate medical school is not enough for the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education.
One of the current goals of the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education is to force all correspondence schools and online universities to stop offering online naturopathy degrees. These courses not only rips off the student who honestly wants to get a degree, but doesn't give the necessary real-world practical education a naturopath needs in order to do his or her job.
And the public is not confident in any doctor - let alone a naturopath - who only has an online degree. Unlike some therapies based on theory (such as psychology), physical doctoring requires years of hands on experience with a variety of patients that no booklore Internet learning can thoroughly teach. These online degrees cheapen the entire profession by making it look as if any schmuck with enough money can set themselves up as a naturopath. This is not what naturopathy is about.
