IHS Students and Graduates can now join the Complementary Medical Association (CMA)


We’re pleased to announce that IHS have had their range of courses registered with the CMA. What does this mean for IHS students and graduates?

Who are the CMA?

The CMA is a not-for-profit organisation. Their primary aim is to promote ethical, responsible, professional complementary medicine to the public and the medical profession. Their membership comprises practitioners, students, colleges and corporate members and they believe that by promoting the CMA and its members through the media, they are able to help the public and doctors realise that CM is – when delivered safely and ethically – a viable form of treatment. This in turn leads to more people making appointments to see properly qualified practitioners, thus enabling these practitioners to make a living. They hope that by using all types of media and a thoroughly professional approach they can bring CM into the 21st century and beyond as a force to be reckoned with.

A large part of their work consists of referring public and conventional medics alike to CMA registered practitioners so that they can be assured that treatment will be delivered by a highly qualified insured practitioner who adheres to a strict code of ethics and disciplinary procedure. They achieve this through the CMA Referrals Scheme, which is completely free of charge. They also maintain a practitioner database at their website www.the-cma.org.uk

The CMA was established in 1995 and have spent over £150,000 performing market research in order to raise the profile of CM and respond to the overriding lack of public and medical knowledge surrounding the complementary medical profession. They are every committed to achieving their mission.

The CMA provide complementary medical content to the Discovery Health website and have acted as consultant to television channels and websites often achieving in excess of ten media exposures per week. They are advertised on the London underground and Janey Goddard (CMA President) is a regular guest on Channel 5 flagship show ‘The Wright Stuff’.

The CMA in 2014

Taking members since 1998, the CMA now represents the interests of just over 10,000 practitioners and students – CMA is the largest multi-disciplinary professional membership body for qualified complementary medical practitioners in the world. They also have over 130 college members and are awarding CMA ‘Approved Supplier Status’ to selected companies that they believe offer exceptional products and services. CMA is an international body with members on every continent and they are currently working with 2 Arab speaking countries and various eastern European countries to initiate homeopathy training for their state medical staff. Their President Janey Goddard has recently testified at the USA’s Whitehouse Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine and was very well received.

What does CMA membership mean for an IHS Student or Graduate?

The IHS courses that are registered with the CMA are:

• IHS Diploma in Nutritional Therapy

• IHS Certificate in Dietary Counselling

• IHS Diploma in Diet, Health and Wellness Coaching

• IHS Certificate in Health and Wellness Coaching

• IHS Advanced Certificate in Health and Wellness Coaching

Current IHS students can join as student practitioners.

Low Cost Insurance

The CMA has developed an excellent insurance package for practitioners and training schools. As part of their support they have sourced excellent low cost insurance professional indemnity packages.

Internet

The CMA website can be viewed at www.the-cma.org.uk. Their site houses over 4600 pages of top quality complementary medical information, all fully referenced and receives circa 1.5 million hits per month. They provide up to the minute medical news to all of their members and other well-known internet news providers. Journal and EZine The CMA journal ‘With Our Compliments’ comes out quarterly and goes to all members, doctors, friends of the CMA and media. The journal is regarded as presenting cutting edge developments in the CM fields. They also produce a monthly EZine which goes to their entire database.

The CMA have outlined the below as some of the ‘Benefits of Membership’:

The Prestige of Belonging to The CMA

As a Full CMA Member you’ll be recognised by the public and doctors alike as the elite force in professional, ethical complementary medicine.

Tell The World How Professional YOU Are

Your CMA Membership tells the world that you are dedicated to excellence in professionalism and ethical practice.

Inclusion on The CMA Website

Your details will be included in our online database, enabling people looking for you. The CMA website gets between 650,000 to 1 million hits each month which is an extraordinary figure. The CMA site receives more visitors than 99.99% of all the websites in the entire world and is certainly one of (if not the) top ranking health sites in the world.

Get Involved!

As a CMA Member you’ll Have the opportunity to Contribute to The CMA Website and our outstanding Monthly e-Newsletter – tell the world about your experiences with complementary or conventional medicine or any important news that you would like to disseminate widely and rapidly.

The CMA Referrals Scheme

The CMA is the only organisation which runs a referral scheme to help you build your business. CMA Registered Members are automatically entitled to join The CMA Referral Scheme. As well as being directly available to the public, your details will be accessible to every doctor and healthcare worker in the UK - directly on their desk via The CMA web site and also via a number of other high profile sites that link to the CMA, including the Discovery Channel web site.

Your Own Free Web Page on The CMA Site

We provide you with your own page on the CMA website (think of it like a mini website) where you can update your information, add testimonials, a picture or logo and we can guide you through the set up process.

Search Engine Optimisation for YOUR Site

You can link to your own website and you should link from your website to The CMA site too - this will drive your own website up the page rankings by dramatically increasing your own site’s ‘visibility’ to search engines - because of your association with The CMA site.

Tell YOUR Story

Media The opportunity to contribute to the media with articles, TV and radio appearances. We are constantly approached by members of the media for information about complementary medicine and the latest updates – why not get involved?

Low Cost Insurance

The CMA has developed the ultimate insurance package for practitioners and training schools to protect YOUR business.

Links to Conventional Medicine

Recent research in GP Magazine showed that over 70% of doctors would like to be able to refer many of their patients to complementary medical practitioners. Also, we’ve noticed an upswing in the number of doctors and nurses looking for complementary medical training. The doctors’ magazine “Pulse” has already setup a website link to The CMA site so that doctors can access The CMA Referrals Scheme easily. The General Medical Council regularly refers journalists to us at The CMA as the GMC recognises that The CMA is a responsible, ethical organisation that is the ‘voice of reason’ within the complementary medical field. The BMJ (British Medical Journal) regularly reports on articles and press releases produced by The CMA.

Government Liaison

As a Member of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, we keep you informed about what’s going on in the Government and Europe. What’s more, if you want to have your say why not come along to the House of Lords with us as a guest of The CMA?

Monthly e-Newsletter

We send you a stunning monthly e-Newsletter to keep you bang up to date with the latest developments in research, politics and any number of issues that affect you directly as a health professional. We also keep you abreast of the vast number of activities in which The CMA is involved.

Exhibitions and Conferences

The CMA is a major player in the Exhibition scene – we support all the high profile exhibitions and have a wonderful exhibition stand that you can come along to and get involved with – it will help you to promote and grow your business.

Speaking Opportunities

We are constantly contacted by exhibition companies and product manufacturers who are looking for top level speakers. If you would like to get involved in speaking on the national and international circuits please let us know so that we can promote you properly.

Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

This is a vital factor when working in the complementary medical field. In order for you to offer your clients or students the very best service, it is essential that you are kept up to date with all the developments in the field and we therefore require our members to undertake ongoing personal and professional development and we assist you in doing this.

Marketing and Business Development Support

The CMA is a huge resource of information for you to take advantage of. We have regular business development seminars and are happy to give our members guidance when faced with business development issues. We are passionate about helping you to become as successful as you can possibly be.

CMA Approved Suppliers

We have an ongoing process of selecting the very best companies in the complementary medical field and awarding them with our CMA Approved Supplier Award – so that you know which of the many thousands of companies out there are actually offering the most ethical and professional service and have a strong commitment to developing the complementary and natural healthcare industries.

Tel: 0044 (0)845 129 8434

Web: www.the-cma.org.uk

Email: admin@the-cma.org.uk