Heather Jackson, MSN, RN, FNP, Assistant Director of Outpatient Surgery and Advanced Practice Team Lead for the Interventional Pain Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center talks about battlefield acupuncture and how it can help civilians too.
Interview conducted by Ivanhoe Broadcast News in October 2018.
Talk to me about battlefield acupuncture, what is it designed to do?
Heather: It’s an alternative or an adjunct in addition to what we already do to treat pain. We use battlefield acupuncture as an additional treatment for pain. The nice thing about battlefield acupuncture is, it doesn’t have the side effects of medications, and it can be used in conjunction with essentially any treatment that you’re using to treat chronic pain.
Can you talk a little bit about the science behind it, how does sticking a needle in someone’s ear help them with chronic pain?
Heather: Yes, it was actually developed by a physician that also performed acupuncture in the air force in two thousand. He wanted to give a treatment for pilots, and for our service men and women, that obviously doing very high tech jobs that could not have the effects of opioids or have sedation and those side effects. He developed this, a limited technique in the ear. The theory in acupuncture is that you can essentially treat any portion of the body through the ear. He developed these five points to target, specifically, pain that can be done quickly and can get our service men and women back out on the field and doing their missions. We’d be treating their pain very effectively in a very fast manner.
And for people that are not in the military. How would this treatment compare to other treatments for chronic pain?
Heather: Yes, I’m a chronic pain specialist. I always say we want to add a lot of tools to the tool kit. Typically, one treatment, one medication, one therapy is not going to treat chronic pain. So if you look (at) pain like a stick diagram, you look at a whole pie. You want to treat different portions of the pie to make it a cumulative treatment process. Acupuncture is additional treatment that can be done in combination with therapies. The physical therapy with other medications and it doesn’t interact. It actually helps promote all those other treatments.
And how often does someone do this?
Heather: Everyone is different. Some patients prefer to do the acupuncture every two to four weeks, some patients still like every three months is okay. I often times have patients scheduled the procedure if they know like a long trip is coming up, and it’s going to exacerbate a certain pain. Weather change often times brings on chronic pain. Or if they’re getting ready to have a Walt Disney World trip, and they know they’re going to be really active. Then they’ll do the treatment for that. Everyone’s different according to their pain, and they use the battlefield for acupuncture in response to or planning for the ailments that they might experience.
And I know the opioid epidemic is the big crisis right now, how would this or would you consider this tool to combat that issue?
Heather: I do. I have a lot of patients. That say they got off of opioids, and they don’t want to go back on them, but they’re in pain, and they need another treatment. I advertise it, in addition to what they’re doing to utilize multiple tools. But the nice thing about the battlefield acupuncture is it’s affordable. A lot of times over years I have recommend acupuncture, and my patients have said, I can’t afford it because the typical consultation for battlefield or not for battlefield, but for full body acupuncture is over a hundred dollars. So we created this one here at our clinic or we didn’t create it, but we got this procedure approved for our nurse practitioners and any provider here at Vanderbilt to do so that we could offer additional access. While they’re here in clinic, they can also get an affordable acupuncture treatment.
And what was the price range for it?
Heather: Twenty dollars. Much more affordable (and) takes about twenty minutes. Twenty to thirty minutes in and out the door, and it’s an additional tool that we’re using. I have a lot of patients get really great benefits from it and say that they haven’t had to have that extra pain pill. Or maybe it reduced their pain medicine to where they only had to take it a few times a week versus a daily dose.
And is this covered by insurance?
Heather: It is not covered by insurance, and that’s the issue with acupuncture. For years, we’ve been saying acupuncture helps pain. Acupuncture can treat a lot of different ailments, but it’s not covered by insurance. That was one of our barriers to care for patients. So, we thought this out. We got it approved with Vanderbilt, and we’ve been giving it the patients. It has been overwhelmingly accepted. Patients love it.
And how long have you been using it?
Heather: We’ve just been doing it since March, and since then I’m already getting to the point where I’m having to overbook patients because I want to accommodate them, and they love it. They love the accessibility. They love to come in for a follow-up appointment. They are able to follow up with their acupuncture or they do the acupuncture after their appointment. So, they are excessively getting two for one when they come in.
So what do you do in the process when a patient comes in?
Heather: Yes, we have them come in, they see the patient room, they have a seat in the chair, and I just talk them and ask them what is their history with acupuncture. Have they ever received a treatment? Often times they say no, this is their first experience. Because we’ve made it accessible and affordable, they thought they would give it a try. I walk them through the whole process. We lay them on the table. If they can’t lie on the table, I can do the procedure with them sitting in a chair. I get them in the most comfortable position. If they are able to lie down, I lay them down we have heat on the table, I prop their feet up to where ever is comfortable, and I just tell them relax. I put needles in their ear. I will start on one side, usually the right side. Do five points in the ear, and then I go to the other side and put five needles in the other ear. I tell them to relax, and I have music going in the background. We call it Zen music to relax them. And often times by the time I come back in twenty minutes later the patient has fallen to sleep because they have been so relaxed.
Can you talk about Elizabeth?
Heather: Elizabeth and I worked together, and she did have some chronic pain, and she asked about it. I told her, I would be more than happy to do the treatment for her. I had noticed that she had a little bit of a limp on a daily basis with work, and we had talked about her history, and I said why don’t you try it. And she said okay. So, we did a couple treatments for her. I noticed, I think we did them on a Friday, and that Monday she walked down to my office, and she was walking so much smoother, and she didn’t have a limp. She didn’t seem to be guarding as much and she said it’s really helped her range of motion and her mobility, and she’s been able to walk further now and has been very, very pleased with it. She had nearly an immediate result. It was a Friday to a Monday that I could see visible results with her. So, it’s an excellent.
Is there anybody that you think the procedure is not good for?
Heather: That’s the wonderful thing about acupuncture. If there’s a bleeding disorder, sometimes we would say you might need to be very cautious with it. But even with people who have bleeding disorders or they are on anticoagulants or blood thinners, we’re still able to do the procedure for. There’s really no indication to not do the acupuncture, and essentially it’s open to everybody. Even if we couldn’t do the needles, we have acupressure where we could do little stickers that just have a little bead on there that could give some stimulation to the point. Even if we had someone they couldn’t tolerate the needles, or they felt like that they were worried that they might have a bleeding problem, we could even do acupressure in those points. So it’s very, very minimally invasive.
Is there anything else that you want to say?
Heather: No, just that it’s been overwhelmingly well accepted. I literally can’t keep enough appointments open for the patients because they like it so much. Overall, we did this because we had a barrier. Overall, it’s been very well accepted. I literally have a hard time accommodate all the patients that request the procedure. We’ve had really great responses. The patients are happy. We’re happy to provide the service and we hope to reach more people.
Good.
ND OF INTERVIEW
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