State Massage Licensing Laws are created to protect the public from harm. Each state has a variety of requirements in many areas including number of hours of education, classes required for licensing, ce requirements, scope of practice, ethics requirements and many other things.
What is lacking is a Massage Practice Framework that would guide state massage boards into creating similar laws based on standards of education, universal scope of practice (Model Practice Act which we have), curriculum requirements (Entry Level Analysis Project on Competencies), leading to more consistent licensing requirements. It would be followed by a program for career progression such as Board Certification, Degrees, and specialty certifications (clinical massage). There would be a strategy to implement regular updates of this important framework. The Massage therapy profession has pieces of this but they are not being implemented. Transferring from one state to another often requires more education and other challenges.
Massage License Portability or the ability to move to other states as a massage therapist is a challenging issue. Licensing Laws for being a massage therapist differ state to state, making it difficult to move about the country and practice as a massage therapist. People coming from other countries have their own challenges.
The Massage Profession is currently working on the issue of license portability. The Federation of Massage State Boards along with the Department of Defense is working to create a Compact Licensing. The National Center for Interstate Compacts, Council of State Governments is coordinating the project. The video below is their first meeting explaining what will happen.
Scope of Practice of Massage Therapy.
One of the main problems is that the scope of practice in each state varies greately. Ideally, massage licensing should allow massage therapists to easily move from state to state to live and work. Model licensing language should be created for all states to follow and adopt. The Federation of Massage State Boards have created a model licensing act in 2014(PDF), but is under scrutiny by the profession (Schools and associations). It is at least a start.
Action Steps
- Contact your Massage State Board to keep up to date on the work of the board.
- AMTA and ABMP are the two main massage associations that should be involved in the project.
- Start or join a network in your area