Federation moves forward

After a celebratory launch last October, the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards’ (FSMTB) executive board has been quietly toiling away on the practical duties of getting an organization up and running, according to its president, Patty Glenn.

The organization remains focused on its goal of providing an agreed-upon entry-level examination that will improve therapist portability and reciprocity among states that regulate massage therapists, she says.

“There is no question of the profession needing an entry-level exam,” Glenn says, “one that is controlled and run by the states. This needs to be developed.”

In March the federation suffered a shake up when Executive Director Rick Rosen, who was a founding member of the FSMTB and a stalwart proponent of the need for a state-board-owned exam, resigned from his post. Glenn declined to comment on the split but says that the FSMTB board is actively looking for a replacement to fill that position.

Then, in April, FSMTB officers met with members of the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB), which owns and administers the only national exams for massage therapists. The meeting, Glenn says, did not yield the hoped-for result. “We wanted to talk with them about the possible acquisition of the [National Certification Exam for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork],” she says. “That’s not really where they’re at.”

The federation has since named testing company Pearson Vue to develop and administer an entry-level exam for the field, with testing slated to begin in mid-2007.

The NCBTMB’s Executive Director John Page disputed the idea that the April meeting was intended for the purpose of discussing selling the exam. The meeting, he says, “provided no formal business proposal for acquisition.”

He also says that the board invited the FSMTB to make a more formal presentation at its July meeting, past this publication’s deadline.

Regarding the FSMTB’s decision to hire a testing company, Page responds, “It is of concern to the NCBTMB to hear that FSMTB had instead chosen a path which is certain to cause division, confusion, and perhaps even potential harm to the profession, especially in light of the fact that despite persistent inquiries none of the FSMTB leadership could identify what the core competencies for entry-level professionals would be, and how the existing NCBTMB exams failed to meet that requirement.”