Diploma of Acupuncture

Jung Tao School offers a 4-year graduate level Diploma in Acupuncture program. The goal of this program is to train students to be highly educated and compassionate health care practitioners. Graduates of Jung Tao School are firmly grounded in the Classics of Chinese medicine, which provide a strong foundation for their careers as healers. Graduates are also well-versed in Western medicine so they may confidently and accurately collaborate with health professionals from all fields of medicine. We feel this integrated approach to medicine is the most effective for diagnosing and treating the patient as a whole.

Program Structure

The structure of the graduate program at JTS is quite different than other programs of higher education. The program is taught as one contiguous piece, with all students in a class remaining together through the full program and each year of study focusing on a broad area of coursework. There are no electives: all courses are required for all students in all years.

The program has been carefully designed so that no one course or component can be taught in isolation of the other components. The focus of our program is “integration” of all aspects of the human being, so it is only natural that the structure and schedule of the courses are all integrated and intertwined with each other. Through this integration, students acquire the ability to synthesize information which may have before appeared to be disparate and unrelated.

Teaching Method

While the school continues to grow to better meet the needs of students, to incorporate new research findings for our field, and to be responsive to evolving accreditation standards, our teaching methods are still influenced by the vision of our founder, Dr. Marshall:

Chinese medicine is not about linear phenomena. The forces and energies of life dance and interact in a simultaneity that reminds us of the contiguous gravitational relationships that stretch across the cosmos. This biological ballet of Qi cannot be understood in a linear fashion and as such cannot be taught in a linear fashion.

Forty years of accumulating and perfecting this curriculum has resulted in a circular method of teaching that gradually adds increasing depth and breadth with each pass through increasingly complex information. The student acquires and apprehends Chinese medicine the way one acquires and apprehends language. Words, phrases, and sentences with ideas, knowledge and wisdom evolve simultaneously. The exploration of this science becomes an exciting and organic experience that is as natural as the science itself.

Schedule

Didactic classes are held five full consecutive days per month, Wednesday through Sunday. These five-day sessions occur twelve months per year for the first three years. Didactic classes generally run from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

In addition to this five day-per-month didactic schedule, each student must complete two 45-hour rotations and one 90-hour clinical observation rotation according to the following schedule:

• Year 1: 45 hours in grand rounds format on the JTS campus (three weekends)
• Year 2: 45 hours in grand rounds format on the JTS campus (three weekends)
• Year 3: 45 hours in the JTS Intern Clinic as a student observer, and 45 hours on the JTS campus in grand rounds format (three weekends)

Clinical internship is performed in the fourth year, with students working in the clinic for four or five consecutive days for fifteen rotations over the twelve months of the final year. All internship training is conducted in the school’s onsite intern clinic. Additional advanced internship electives are available for students needing or wanting additional supervised advanced clinical experience.

Accreditation

Jung Tao School of Classical Chinese Medicine and its following program is accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine (ACAHM):