Developing clinical hypnotherapy educational guidelines through consensus

Abstract

Clinical hypnotherapy has been practiced for many years. The first professional association was founded in 1949 (AHA, 2013b) and since then other associations have emerged as the profession has developed (AACHP, 2012; ASCH, 2014c; PHA, 2014). South Australia commissioned two reports on hypnosis (PoSA, 2008, 2009a) which were a prelude to the deregulation of hypnosis in South Australia, followed by similar legislation in Western Australia (SASH, 2010; WAG, 2005). As the profession has developed there have been simultaneous concerns for other unregistered health practitioners that has generated discussion and subsequent legislation related to all unregistered practitioners (AHMAC, 2011; Department of Health, 2013; HCCC (NSW), 2012; Swan, 2014). Although practitioners are unregistered some clinical hypnotherapy training has chosen to become accredited under the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) that is the national regulator for Australia's vocational education and training (VET) sector. Courses with those accreditations provide qualifications ranging from Certificate IVs to Advanced Diplomas in clinical hypnotherapy (AAH, 2013b; ACH, 2013; AHS, 2013; CA, 2013a; Phoenix, 2013) and other training provides professionally accepted qualifications. At the heart of the difficulty within clinical hypnotherapy education is the lack of agreed standards or even a core of skills that all would agree are its essential competencies and proficiencies. Various attempts have been made to arrive at a set of core competencies but this has proven fraught given the various interest groups and constituencies that claim to represent the profession (PoSA, 2009a). The literature surrounding clinical hypnotherapy pedagogy is at best sparse providing little and out of date commentary (Hammond & Elkins, 1994). For hypnosis to take its place alongside other accredited complementary therapies it needs to generate a set of standards that reflect the required competencies a practitioner needs to acquire to become competent. With the paucity of literature available a Delphi methodology was chosen to provide the data which would serve as a basis from which guidance can be drawn and future research could be undertaken.

Date of Award	2015
Original language	English