The Comprehensive Guide to Dry Needling Certifications

Show Notes

In this episode of the Dr. JJ Thomas Podcast, we dive into the vital topic of dry needling for clinicians, exploring the best educational paths to enhance their skills. I provide an in-depth look at the best programs, emphasizing accreditation, quality of instruction, and clinical application. We'll explore what makes a dry needling course stand out, ensuring you make an informed decision for your professional development. Join us as we navigate the journey to becoming proficient in dry needling, highlighting key factors that clinicians must consider to achieve excellence in their practice. For more on our in person Physical Therapy continuing education classes (such as DRY NEEDLING), check out our Primal University 🎓 https://bit.ly/primaluniversityeducation

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Creators & Guests

Host

Dr. JJ Thomas

Master of Movement With over 20 years of experience, Dr. JJ Thomas has established herself as a highly successful clinician and educator. Her unique experiences and training have shaped her into a passionate advocate for movement and patient care. Graduated from the renowned University of Delaware, the #1 ranked physical therapy school in the nation. Holds multiple certifications in advanced specialty techniques, including dry needling, SFMA, FRC, and more. Instructs and trains clinicians nationwide in physical therapy, chiropractic, and sports medicine, both through Evidence in Motion (EIM) and independently. Expertise in movement analysis and dry needling has made her a sought-after professional in the field of sports medicine. Worked with notable organizations and athletes, including the US Field Hockey Team and professional athletes from NFL, MLB, NBA, USATF, PGA, US Squash, USPA (polo), and more. Recognized as an expert and consultant in dry needling, contributing to national legislative advancements and education standards in the field. Lives an active lifestyle, engaging in various activities like running, weight lifting, Jiu Jitsu, hiking, skiing, and more.

What is The Dr. JJ Thomas Podcast?

Welcome to The Dr. JJ Thomas Podcast! Here I'll be talking all things physical therapy, raw and unplugged, giving you the unfiltered insights you've been searching for in your cash-based physical therapy business. If you're caught in the grind of the traditional model, swamped with paperwork, or feeling like you're not reaching your full potential as a physical therapist, this podcast was created just for you.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:00

Because if you wanna continue to keep your standards at a high level as a physical therapist, then you need to make sure that every technique that you're learning, whether it's dry needling or something else, is following those same standards. And so in the competency report, it a 100% says that we should, that we need to be making sure that we're following, OSHA protocols. So that's one quick and dirty thing you can check. Welcome to the doctor JJ Thomas podcast. Hey, everybody.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:32

Welcome to the doctor JJ Thomas podcast. I'm doctor JJ Thomas. Thank you for joining us today. Today's episode is a special one, actually. It's in response to how many messages and DMs I get with a single particular question.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 00:46

And the question is, people want to know clinicians wanna know where they should study and learn to dry needle. I cannot tell you over the course of the last 10 years, especially the last 5 years, how many DMs I answer, with this question. And the question is not a simple, oh, go to this person. Right? There's not a single one answer.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 01:07

So it dawned on me that I can help more people by sharing this in the YouTube setting. So we're gonna go over the criteria of how you can, do a great job in choosing a great continuing education provider for yourself when you wanna learn dry needling. I'm gonna start with this. I guess, Shelley, let me start with my background again in dry needling for those of you that don't know. My entire background, not entire, but summed up version, is I graduated PT school from University of Delaware in 2000.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 01:35

I came into dry needling in 2009. And the reason I became the reason I sought out dry needling actually was to help a patient. This patient, he was sent to me by my mentor and had already seen a lot of the other expert clinicians in the area for a shoulder problem that he had that wasn't responding to anything. Like, this poor guy, he's a fisherman, really active, healthy individual. He had, rotator cuff symptoms that had gone through 9 different surgeries, had seen 9 or 10 different doctors, 4 or 5 different physical therapists.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:12

And my mentor at the time saw him and was able to get a single day relief, 24 hours of relief after doing deep soft tissue work to his muscles. And when he plateaued and he wasn't able to get him past that, I was working in aquatic therapy at the time. And my mentor said, JJ, I want you to see this individual, and I want you to do I'm thinking if we do soft tissue mobilization, to this gentleman in the warm water I worked into, like, an in a 92 degree pool at the time. Do the soft tissue mobilization in the warm water and then exercise it in the water, then maybe we'll get greater relief. And we did.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:48

We got 2 days relief. And so I was like, yes. We're on the right target. Good job, Paul. We're in we're in the we're on the road.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 02:55

And what happened is then we plateaued in our progress. So after that 2 days relief, we went about 5 5 week 4 or 5 weeks of that, and we couldn't get more than 2 days relief. So my biggest problem was that I didn't have another therapist to send him to that I thought would be able to find an answer differently than myself or all these other amazing clinicians that I knew he had already seen. So I called my friend in Atlanta, and I I said my friend, Cara, give a little shout out to Cara Becker. I'll I'll have to, I'll make sure she there's a link to her on this.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 03:30

And I said, Cara, talk through this problem with me. I need to find a way for this this gentleman. And she said, have you tried dry needling? I'd never heard of it. So in 2009, that's why I sought out dry needling.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 03:41

At the time, I became double certified. I was working in Delaware as a therapist, and, there were only, to my knowledge, about 300 clinicians in the country using dry needling in physical therapy that is. And so I thought, you know what? If I'm gonna bring this to the state of Delaware, I better be pretty damn good at it. So I decided to double certify, and I took, courses through what was then Kineticore, which has now joined with Evidence in Motion.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:08

And I also certified through myopane seminar seminars, which is, mainly Jan Dimere Hall. Great great certification programs. But my having said that, in in the meantime, the the the course of dry needling has changed so much since I started needling in 2009. There are many different things to consider when you're thinking about a continuing education provider. So my background is I was double certified in both of those techniques.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 04:38

But luckily for me, I think because I was the only physical therapist in Delaware at the time anyone that knows me knows I'm now in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area, but I started in Delaware. And because of that, as I said, I felt like right off the bat, I needed to be an expert. So I submersed myself into everything I could learning related to dry needling. I think that was very, very valuable. I had a lot of great mentors along the way.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:06

Jan Damerholt, as I said, Eido Zellstra, who is with Evidence in Motion. Both of those guys really made themselves accessible to me, and they allowed me to really dive into more and more learning. And, also, in addition, I had it really was a, I wanna say a an obstacle at the time, the obstacle of some scope of practice issues because there were other professionals who didn't necessarily want dry needling to be formally approved in the state of Delaware, in other state states in the country. And so I started taking with, the more and more I learned about dry needling, the more I became known as an expert. And in 2012, I started teaching it.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 05:46

And right around that same time, probably 2012 into 2013, I started working in a legislative capacity to help support other physical therapists, dry needling in their states. So I was very fortunate to be able to work with the, Delaware, Board of Professional Regulations and the legislature in adding dry needling to their scope of practice. And I think that was around 2015 as well. And with that meant that I was played a major role in writing the, the, rules and regulations around it in within the scope of practice. But also through the APTA, I was able to help other states like Washington state, which finally eventually turned around and insert and I served as a resource to to other states as well that were in the midst in the midst of that legislative struggle, I wanna say, for, understanding the the the details around competency.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 06:41

Not not not not just competency standards, but education around, scope of practice issues related to dry needling. But one of the biggest opportunities that I had and was able to participate in that will be really relevant to our purposes for today's episode was my participation in the Federation of State Boards of PTs, task force on dry needling back in 2015. In 2015, the Federation of State Boards of PT, contracted an outside human resource agency, HUMRO. And HUMRO's job was to take this task force and independently work us through a I say a series, but it was a an enormous series of questions, and and learning and education around minimum standards for competency in safely and effectively dry needling for clinicians, for physical therapists. And so what this task force was, is it was, I think, 6 or 7 expert dry needling therapists.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 07:43

And there were also, representatives from Doctor of Physical Therapy Education Systems. And what we did as a task force is leading up to a full 2 day in person weekend. Leading up to that, there were a lot of questions and answers and surveys we participated in, around the questions of education and knowledge criteria and skills related to safely and effectively dry needling. From that foundational knowledge, we met for 2 long full days. And as a task force, we deliberated and we answered 100 and 100 of questions related to what a physical therapist needs to be able to know knowledge criteria and do skill criteria in order to safely and effectively learn to dry needle.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:32

Thus, the outcome was really cool. So mind you, I wanna I wanna set the stage here. We had 2 full days of this in-depth conversation around what do we need to do and know to safely and effectively draw a needle. We answered thousands of questions around this, and we all we had to each come to an agreement on every criteria. And from that, HUMRO analyzed the data.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 08:55

And what they realized when they took the dataset of what we learn in our doctor of physical therapy, in our baseline education as a doctor of physical therapy, and what we need to know to safely and effectively dry needle, what they figured out is that 86% of what we learn in our doctoral baseline education, 86% is what we need to know to safely and effectively dry needling. So you come out of your doctor of physical therapy program already having 86% of the knowledge criteria and the skills required to safely and effectively dry needle. How cool is that? The reason this was so pivotal for our profession is that there were professionals suggesting that how could we safely learn to dry needle someone in 2 days of a certification program. Mind you, those a lot of the programs, if you haven't looked into them, are broken into levels.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 09:48

And so those first two days are, often low risk musculature, and it's it's a 2 full days of dry needling education. So when you look at the competency report, what you realize is that first two days, what we're learning is that additional 14%. That additional 14 percent is all that's left out of your doctoral education to be able to safely and effectively dry needle. Now I I need to clarify one other thing. One of the most difficult things we did in that task force to identify competency standards for physical therapists performing dry needling was identify and define dry needling.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 10:28

Because quite honestly, if you take a term like dry needling and you don't identify it, you don't define it in the arena with which it's being used, it can be misconstrued. The definition that we came up with in the Federation of State Boards Task Force was very specific to dry needling by a physical therapist. Dry needling, the neuromusculoskeletal system as it relates to movement and pain is essentially our scope of practice. That's really important to remember because when we're looking at that 86% that we identified, knowledge criteria and skills that we have coming out of our baseline education, that 86% is foundational important knowledge to be able to then get the additional 14% in the dry needling certification level 1 programs to adequately, safely, effectively dry needle someone. So that foundational knowledge is really important for you when you're making a decision on who you're going to choose to, educate you in your dry needling certification programs.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 11:27

I would like to say take it a step further and help you realize that the other way you can use this FSBPT, this HUMRO, competency report is to recognize that all of that knowledge criteria and skills are in this report. So when you're looking at an education program, I would urge you to look at this report and see what components of it are critical in a safe and competent dry needling education. One of the things I'll highlight is that as physical therapists, even regardless of the HUMRO report, even regardless of this competency report, is that as physical therapists, almost every single scope of practice requires that we follow OSHA guidelines. Right? Standard operating procedures for cleanliness and for, it's it's OSHA protocols.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:19

Right? It is for cleanliness and prevention from, risk of communication of bodily fluids, essentially. And so one of the things that I think is really important to look for is the continuing education company that you're considering to teach you your dry needling certification, are they following OSHA protocols themselves? It sounds silly, and I would like to also it it might sound silly, but it's a foundational piece of who we are as physical therapists. And I think the minute we start letting our, standards get watered down in any aspect, then we're asking for trouble.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 12:56

So that's a very quick and quick and easy thing to check, but I think it's really important. Because if you wanna continue to keep your standards at a high level as a physical therapist, then you need to make sure that every technique that you're learning, whether it's dry needling or something else, is following those same standards. And so in the competency report, it a 100% says that we should, that we need to be making sure that we're following, OSHA protocols. So that's one quick and dirty thing you can check. Another thing that I would suggest that you look at, when you're entertaining the idea of studying with different certifications in dry needling is look at the foundational concepts with which you're going to learn dry needling.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 13:39

As physical therapists, we are specialists in the neuromusculoskeletal system as it relates to movement and pain. So every technique that we are going to utilize, whether it's with our hands, whether it's with a needle, whether it's with exercise, needs to support that foundational, scope. It's our scope of practice. And so when you're entertaining the idea of studying with a dry needling, certification company, I would also suggest that you look to make sure that the approach that they're gonna utilize to train you in dry needling is in fact in line with our scope as physical therapists. I say this with the utmost respect to other professions because as physical therapists, our scope, as I said, is the neuromusculoskeletal system as it relates to movement and pain.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 14:22

This is also why the HUMRO competency report, it was so important that we define dry needling because we needed to define that we were talking about dry needling for the neuromusculoskeletal system as we would use it in physical therapy. So again, when you're looking for a continuing education company, this has to be a this has to be a huge component. If you are going to someone to learn dry needling and they're using other professionals' knowledge criteria, then you're essentially potentially outside your scope. You're potentially you're now maybe not doing that 86%. Right?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 14:57

You need to make sure that you're looking at a company that's in line with your education and background as a physical therapist, as a neuromusculoskeletal specialist. So those are very fundamental things, but super important when you're choosing a dry needling education provider. So that gives you a framework, basically, of really 2 of what I think are the most important things when choosing a gyrinadling education provider in terms of a minimum standard in for a physical therapist or for a neuromusculoskeletal specialist. There are some other things I can tell you though. And really, what I the analogy I wanna make here is it's funny to me that many people come to me, and they want me to give them a single name or a single company to study with.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 15:42

To be honest, I have lots of favorites. Because really what it comes down to, if they're following those two things, if they're following our basically our standards as physical therapists, then the rest is the art of it. So take this analogy, if you will. As physical therapists, just ask yourself, how many joint mobilization courses have you been to? How many continuing education courses have you been to that might give you a different technique for joint mobilization or for manipulation?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:12

Right? There's tons of courses out there that are just a little different on their, baseline principles and how the technique is applied and how you might evaluate or or pursue treatment for that particular, in that particular area. And what you've done, likely, if you've been out for any length of time, you've taken nuggets from each of those techniques and courses, and you've used your clinical patterning, your clinical decision making processes to help you really refine which patients and when to use which technique with. Right? Dry needling is no different.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 16:47

As long as you're going to a continuing education company that is treating the neuromusculoskeletal system as it relates to movement and pain, it's gonna be very valuable. And you're gonna take that information, and one course might be more, apt to give you a more of a neural approach. Right? They may I can think of a couple in particular that give you more of a a neural foundational perspective where you're really it's not as much about the trigger point as it is about following the neural pathways and, considering inhibition contributions and things like this. Right?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:22

And there may be another another process, another, course that focuses more on the trigger points and focuses more on the referral patterns. And there might be a whole another course, and there is, that looks more at, you know, the functional approach, meaning they look at, underlying movement deficits. Right? And so all of these things have value. So my suggestion would be you've heard my other podcast likely where, you know, in a cash based practice, the best thing to make you really marketable, one of the best things, is to be have a niche.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 17:54

Right? And if your niche is gonna be dry needling, don't just take one certification. You need to take them all, honestly. You need to know all these different skill sets within dry needling, and that's what's gonna make you an expert. Because from there, you're gonna have this huge pool of tools and data that you can pick and choose which patients you're gonna use to each technique with.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 18:16

Right? And when I take these so I've had the benefit, like I said, teaching for ConnectiCore back in 2012 for many years and then transitioning into Evidence in Motion. And now I I don't formally teach with, any dry needling company, individually anymore. I consult and and teach alongside some of my, former colleagues. But but for the most part, what I gained so much out of teaching was the ability to learn from so many different types of dry needling therapists.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 18:47

And each course is gonna give you not just dry needling nuggets, but it's gonna give you other perspectives in terms of treatment approach for your patients. And that's what's gonna set you up here standard wise. So as like I just to reiterate, as long as you have the foundational pieces as a physical therapist because that's kinda what I'm seeing. The trend what what scares me is that, unfortunately, I do see some physical therapists choosing they don't mean to. It's it's it's, unintentional, but they're unintentionally choosing courses that may not be a 100% in line with our physical therapy, approach.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 19:28

And that could get you into trouble. So, my suggestion is the best thing you can do is, as I said in earlier in the episode, is download actually, we'll leave the competency report in the description, the link to it. It's accessible online. And we're actually I was honored to have been asked to be on the competency updates, which is coming. We're meeting a task force is meeting again this summer to update the competency standards and make sure we're still current with all the different education processes and standards out there.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 20:02

That's happening this summer. So I'll probably do another podcast after that's finalized of that report and and update you on any of the of the progress we've made in terms of that. But my guess is the the really important foundational stuff is not gonna change. Like, are we following OSHA protocols? Are we acting as physical therapists do and following our physical therapy standards?

Dr. JJ Thomas: 20:24

Those are the 2 most important things. From there, whoever you decide to go with, it's more of an art. And that my suggestion with that is be an artist. Go and learn with everyone you can, and you're going to find that you're gonna pick up excellent skill sets from each program in a different way. And it's all gonna be of of great value.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 20:46

So I hope this helps all of you. As I said, I'm hoping to be able to just when I get this question in the future, maybe I can just send you guys but if you follow these things, you should be in really good shape. We also don't forget, we host master classes at our facility. We also don't forget, we host master classes at our facility, really every month, and we host 2 hour and 4 hour master classes. And, really, what the master classes are, they're a blend of all the different types of education models that I've studied with through the many experts I've worked with through the years.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 21:23

So the master class really is a nice melting pot of all the different techniques that are out there, and I can help you integrate them. It's really a fun, fun class. We'd love to see you there. The link to that is through Primal University, so you can always link that, sign up. And, if you have any questions, let me know.

Dr. JJ Thomas: 21:39

Till next time.