Poll Results for the following Question:

Do you feel qualified to practice as a primary care provider?

Results:

Yes
69.1%
No
30.9%

Total Respondents: 136

Comments:

Note: These comments are reproduced as written by visitors to this Web site.
They have not been edited for content, grammar, or spelling.

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Anonymous
Yes After graduating and passing the state boards, it took a year or so until I felt comfortable seeing myself as a primary care provider. In the best of worlds, I would like to see internship opportunities after initial licensing.

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Anonymous
Yes I feel competent enough to know when to refer out

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ingaritay@hotmail.com
Yes In this context, primary care provider must mean Oriental medicine and not Western. We are not trained, nor licensed to provide Western-style care.

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amy32@acupuncture.com
No We need our schools to provide us with better educations if we are ever going to be primary care providers. I am a second-year student.

My school, and all of the schools I have visited, are cash-cows with little interest in improving the profession. I hope that this changes someday, but right now with the schools run as businesses, education in our field is very poor.

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mgregoria@hotmail.com
No I am a student about to graduate and I don't even feel ready to see patients. My classes were taught by people who often did not speak English or were just recently graduated. Our schools are a big problem.

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Anonymous
No Our schools are not preparing us to be primary care providers. Unfortunately they seem to be money-driven, and not committed to the future of this profession. We need better professors, better access to a wider variety of patients in clinic, and better preparation for working in an integrated healthcare system.