Core Training in Acupuncture and East Asian Medicine for Post-Stroke Care

3 Class / 15 Hour Series

February 17, March 17 and April 27
11am – 4pm EST

15 CEUs (pending) NCCAOM Provider # 278
This course has been approved by the California Acupuncture Board, Provider Number 679, for 15 hours of continuing education.
This course is non-refundable.

Stroke is a leading cause of disability worldwide, particularly among communities of color and the medically underserved; incidence appears to rise with the inflammation and blood stasis of COVID-19. Even before the pandemic, stroke was on the rise among young patients; now we can expect to see the condition more and more. With our unique practical skills and theoretical framework, acupuncturists can be of extraordinary benefit to patients at any stage of stroke survival, even years later – and also in preventive care, identifying and addressing constitutional and biomedical risk factors. Too often, school courses and research protocols jump to treating scalp and body points for motor impairment after stroke, barely scratching the surface of the medicine’s capabilities.

This course systematically introduces and develops key skills for assessment and treatment planning in acute and chronic post-stroke care. These include:

• A core theoretical framework for stroke etiology, prevention and treatment
• Relevant anatomy and pathology, from an integrative, news-you-can-use perspective
• A staged approach to patient assessment and treatment planning throughout the recovery journey
• Clear guidelines for framing both practitioner and patient expectations, relative to stroke severity and time window post stroke

The course is presented in three parts that can be broken into weekly modular units or ‘binged’. Up front, the emphasis is on immediate application of skills that practitioners already have, in case of CVA among a practitioner’s family or patient base. Course participants will be asked to reflect on their own patient charts to assess who may be at elevated stroke risk and what interventions could be of help. For ongoing study, case examples are provided along with online resources and readings. The overall theoretical framework and its development can be found in Claudia’s PhD thesis (easily searched and freely available online – search ‘Citkovitz stroke’ and it pops right up).

Refund Policy:

Refunds of 75% will be granted up to the first day of class. No refunds will be granted after that.

Claudia Citkovitz PhD, MS, LAc.

Claudia is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on Acupuncture treatment for women during Labor and Delivery as well as patients recovering from Stroke. As one of a small number of US acupuncturists with a research PhD, she works actively to improve acupuncture research methodology and practice-informed research, as well as evidence-informed practice.

Claudia Citkovitz began her Chinese Medicine studies in 1997, assisting in the practice of Tom Bisio while attending Pacific and Tri-State Colleges. She also studied at the Beijing Language and Cultural Institute in China. She is currently in private practice at the White Pine Clinic in Amherst, Massachusetts.

For 17 years, Claudia was Preceptor and Director of the Acupuncture Program at Lutheran Medical Center (now NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn), a 466-bed community hospital in Brooklyn, NY. Through the program, she treated inpatients in the Neurological/Orthopedic Rehabilitation and Labor and Delivery units as well as pain and cancer patients throughout the hospital, training over 300 acupuncture students and practitioners in the provision of evidence-informed inpatient acupuncture care.

Claudia has been s a lecturer or clinical instructor at numerous Master’s and Doctoral level acupuncture programs throughout the US as well as Europe and the UK. She has published research in acupuncture during Labor and Delivery and acupuncture research methods, and completed her PhD on acupuncture during stroke rehabilitation under Volker Scheid at the University of Westminster in London. She is a peer reviewer and Editorial Board member of multiple journals, a Board Member of the Society for Acupuncture Research, and a Commissioner on the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine.