Dr. Khanita Suvarnasuddhi received her Masters of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine at the Fingerlakes School of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in August of 2017. She also received her Doctor of Chiropractic at New York Chiropractic College in December 2016. It was a grueling 4 years of school because Dr. Khanita decided to pursue both programs at the same time. (I regret nothing!!) However, through her extensive training, she is able to look at a problem from multiple angles that would best serve the patient.
Sometimes, people ask me about how long it took for me to get my license. There is a lot of misconception about what exactly goes into this Master’s program. In all honesty…this is way more work than a Master’s program. You add that on top of another Doctorate program at the time and I basically became a “professional student.” According to my accredited institution, the Master of Science in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (MSAOM) prepares the graduates to be able to “practice as independent healthcare providers capable of practicing in multidisciplinary healthcare settings.” At my school, we did trimesters as well (15 weeks of school) with roughly 2-2.5 weeks of break in between. Oh yeah, you heard me right, I had school during the beautiful summer time. (T_T) So the MSAOM degree requires a minimum of nine trimesters (about 3 years). Each semester I had a range between 15-20 credits per trimester, but with my added doctorate program… I always had more than 20 credits per trimester. There was one trimester that I was taking 36 credits! (yes, it hurt the entire time, I was basically a robot). Just from the MSAOM alone, there I took 165 credit hours with over 3,000 contact hours. That’s a lot of time that goes into this degree and for me to know what I am doing with Chinese Medicine!
