The following is a statement released by the NCBMBT on March 16, 2020, announcing temporary acceptance of online massage CEUs for all continuing education credit hours for massage therapists renewing their licenses during the 2020 renewal year. Normally, massage therapists in North Carolina may only apply up to 12 hours of online massage CEUs toward their license renewal.
“Greetings LMBTs,
We hope this email reaches you in good health!
The Board has been closely monitoring the COVID-19 medical situation. We wanted to be in touch with you about our thoughts and our accommodations to you and your business at this time. Please remember that our mandate from the State is to protect the public.
First, if you have an LMBT license that expires December 31, 2020, we realize that you might have paid for classes or planned to take classes or planned to attend a conference that has now been cancelled. Likely, for several months, hands-on classes will be cancelled pursuant to the directive of both the CDC and the Governor of NC. We realize this puts a hardship on your ability to acquire the required hands-on classes to renew your license. For the renewal period ending in December 31, 2020 ONLY, the Board will be allowing all CE classes to be online. You must still renew on time and must still enter all your data into the Board’s web-based site, there is no exception to this. We are making this one time accommodation due to the extremely rare situation the world finds itself in at this time.
Secondly, many of you have written to ask if you should be seeing clients at all during this time. This is a decision that each therapist or business must make for themselves. We all have access to the same medical information and we will share a few links for your information here. Some therapists have made the decision to close business for a few weeks. Some therapists are still seeing clients, taking an abundance of caution with hand washing, cleaning equipment, wearing gloves and or masks, cleaning any surfaces that a client might touch while within the business.
Each LMBT must make the best decision for themselves and their business, taking into account all the factors mentioned above, especially your and the Board’s obligation to protect the public.
Here are some links that might be helpful in making your decisions.
CDC.gov:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
Duke Health:
https://www.dukehealth.org
Mayo Clinic:
https://www.mayoclinic.org
The North Carolina Board of Massage Therapy and Bodywork will continue to monitor this unique situation and send further emails when there are changes that need to be communicated.
We appreciate your continued excellence in your care of your clients, your co-workers and yourself.
Be well,
Nancy Harrell, Chair
NCBMBT”