Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/81195
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF RESEARCH Ruth Werner A massage therapist for more than 25 years, Ruth Werner is president of the Massage Therapy Foundation (MTF), an organization "dedicated to promoting community service, research, and education for the massage therapy and bodywork professions." Her book A Massage Therapist's Guide to Pathology is in its fifth edition and continues to inform therapists who work with clients struggling with medical conditions. As president of the MTF, Werner has sought to increase the research literacy of massage therapists in the hopes of creating more evidence-informed practitioners. MASSAGE & BODYWORK: How do you feel about the state of current massage research and where do you see it progressing? RUTH WERNER (RW): My role is building support for increasing awareness of research on massage therapy. For me, that means my targets—the people I want to connect with—are not so much researchers, but massage therapists who have yet to discover how meaningful this work can be for them. For that reason I don't have strong negative or positive feelings about the state of current research and where it's progressing. My job is simply to create avenues of information flow. M&B: What are some unique challenges that a personalized experience like a massage therapy session poses to researchers? RW: In many ways, massage has more in common with psychotherapy than it has with traditional forms of physical medicine. The good news is that research that pays attention to qualitative experience, rather than quantitative measures, has become well accepted in the academic community, and when we ask questions about the nature of the therapeutic relationship between a client and a therapist, this research model is a good fit. The bad news is that qualitative research is much more complex and difficult to execute well then quantitative research. Research and the Practitioner M&B: How can massage therapists begin to improve their research literacy? What are some practical first steps to increasing their research capacity? RW: I can make a couple of suggestions. One is go to classes about this topic, and attend research conferences. The first few sessions will probably feel like they're going right over your head, but if you can leave your mind open and live with confusion for awhile, it really does begin to make sense. This is simply a matter of learning a new language and it takes practice; it doesn't come automatically. The other thing I can strongly recommend is that the MTF, in conjunction with Whitney Lowe and Jan Schwartz's Education Training and Solutions, has just created an online six- hour continuing education course called the "Basics of Research Literacy." This highly interactive, skills- based distance-learning opportunity will do a lot to help people become more comfortable in this field. You can access it through Massagetherapy foundation.org.