I'm considering doing one next year, I've been doing a BA, philosophy & writing mostly, going to finish first year and hopefully go into Naturopathy next year, but what I wanted to ask was if anyone knows anything about this sort of degree, difficulty, career opportunities post-degree, salary, that sort of stuff.

I mean, I've used the internet, but as far as the internet goes I trust people with experience more than I trust the faceless entity that is the www. For example, one site said average salary was $21k, and another said like $50k. So if anyone could clarify that sort of thing, or anyone who has experience in natural medicine could give me some tips, I'd really appreciate it.

Also, if anyone can recommend me some preliminary reading to do as I'm motivated to do well and don't want to waste the next 6 months before it starts doing nothing.

Cheers.

Where would you want to set up shop?

Probably Australia, just because that's where I live now, that's where I'll probably be learning/working until I'm qualified, but I'm not set on it. Hadn't thought too much about it.

If you have a customer-base, then you can do well with it. The job relies on people wanting to make use of your services.

I'd suggest going through your city or town to find out if there is a demand. Is there currently access to naturopathic medicine? Who is offering the service? What kinds of fees do they charge?

If there are customers out there, then you may have found a niche.

If you have a customer-base, then you can do well with it. The job relies on people wanting to make use of your services.

I'd suggest going through your city or town to find out if there is a demand. Is there currently access to naturopathic medicine? Who is offering the service? What kinds of fees do they charge?

If there are customers out there, then you may have found a niche.

Yeah, there are at least a couple. From what I've heard their fees are fairly high. A lot of Day Spa type places employ naturopaths as well, helps if you've got some other useful skills like massage or w/e. Some hotels have them. Thanks man.

Yes, if you're learning massage therapy, and can work within a spa, as a part of this degree, then you're set for life.

Good luck. :)

Why don't you become a real doctor or pharmacist instead of being a naturofag.

The spa business in Europe is thriving and it's beginning to extend throughout the rest of the western world; it's a huge growth market. Anybody with marketable spa skills has a job waiting for them.

Why don't you become a real doctor or pharmacist instead of being a naturofag.

A few reasons. I never did senior chem or bio, so I don't qualify for any uni level chem or medicine courses. I wouldn't want to be a pharmacist, it looks lame. Naturopathy is a more hands on approach, you don't just distribute package of pills. I'd prefer working with plant matter, any idiot can hand out pills.

Also, I don't really plan to do this job for the rest of my life, I'll be doing it until I can afford a sustainable living environment as far away from society as is feasible, so having a medicine degree will be fairly useless, while knowing natural remedies will be a definite plus.

if anyone knows anything about...

the naturopathic program advisor at your school knows.

all anyone here can probably do is google.

the naturopathic program advisor at your school knows.

all anyone here can probably do is google.

I'm at uni. A uni with no natural medicine courses, and to be honest I don't really know if they have a naturopathic program advisor, but I really doubt it. I don't keep a catalogue of everyone here and their profession so I really wouldn't know prior to making a thread whether anyone could offer me advice.

I'm at uni. A uni with no natural medicine courses, and to be honest I don't really know if they have a naturopathic program advisor, but I really doubt it. I don't keep a catalogue of everyone here and their profession so I really wouldn't know prior to making a thread whether anyone could offer me advice.

well if your university doesn't have a naturopathic medicine program, then where were you planning on going to get this degree? the school will have an advisor if they have the program. if they don't have the program, then yes, it would be dumb to have the advisor.

you want answers from real people beyond just internet research. well ok. a program advisor is one source. the naturopathic doctors in your area are another. if you are sincere enough, i'm sure they would be happy to tell you how they got into the field, where they went to school and how they got in, and then how they found employment later and what one can expect to make money wise. i really don't think there are any naturopaths on totse, so the real world would be your best bet.

also, from what i just looked up about naturopathy in australia, it's not a graduate program. you earn a bachelor's degree. so perhaps you're set on getting that BA in philosophy, but you could've been doing just naturopathy all along.

well if your university doesn't have a naturopathic medicine program, then where were you planning on going to get this degree? the school will have an advisor if they have the program. if they don't have the program, then yes, it would be dumb to have the advisor.

you want answers from real people beyond just internet research. well ok. a program advisor is one source. the naturopathic doctors in your area are another. if you are sincere enough, i'm sure they would be happy to tell you how they got into the field, where they went to school and how they got in, and then how they found employment later and what one can expect to make money wise. i really don't think there are any naturopaths on totse, so the real world would be your best bet.

also, from what i just looked up about naturopathy in australia, it's not a graduate program. you earn a bachelor's degree. so perhaps you're set on getting that BA in philosophy, but you could've been doing just naturopathy all along.

I'll be going to the Australian College of Natural Medicine. Yeah, anyone can call themselves a naturopath, you don't need any sort of qualification, but I'd like to able to get employment other than self-employment, and I'd like to be able to do the job. Yeah I might go ask some naturopaths, that's a pretty good idea, thanks man.

Haha, yeah I could've been doing it all along but I didn't really know what I wanted to do, it took me a while to work it out.

I am from the same country as you and I was giving this exact same field of endeavour serious consideration just recently.

What you have to do is do a degree in Applied Science (Naturopathy), which I THINK is 4 years (might be 3?) and then after that you do a graduate diploma in naturopathy which is 1 year. You need the graduate diploma in order to be certified by the (non government recognised) boards to get registered as a practicing naturopath.

This degree is not offered at many places. I think in Sydney it is only offered at UWS Milperra.

You can do an advanced diploma at TAFE which will then set you up to do the graduate diploma at uni, or you can do the advanced diploma through a registered training organisation such as a naturopathy college which will also set you up for the grad dip at uni.

If I was you I would do it at university as it has a greater value to Joe Public. I think the UAI cutoff is 70.5, so it's pretty easy to get in to.

From memory the course has stuff in it like remedial massage, western herbal medicine (which is basically evidence based herbal medicine with old wives tales thrown in, so you will get your Chinese medicine in there, but not from a Chinese perspective), acupuncture, herbal preventative medicine and other stuff. I think oriental traditional medicine is also included but very briefly. There are certain electives you choose apart from the required course work which will determine what area you will work in once you finish, if you decide to be a specialist naturopath.

Employment prospects are shit, which is why I decided not to pursue it. You will likely end up working in a chemist (pharmacy) giving advice to people who come in and look at the herbal medicine, or if you are very very lucky work somewhere like a sports injury centre, a health resort or an actual naturopathy clinic (very unlikely as they are nearly always owner operated, and far and few between, the market just isn't there). If you want to be a fair dinkum naturopath you would want to open your own practice, but in order to attract clients you would need to offer them something more than just naturopathy, say a medical graduate who is also a qualified naturopath, or a pediatrician, or an optometrist, or a cardiologist, basically a qualified MD who gives out advice for conditions using traditional approaches, who would NOT be the patients regular GP/specialist and would instruct them to consult with their GP or specialist before commencing with alternative therapies to make sure there is no contraindication (is that the right word?) with any other medicines they are currently on.

Or you could style yourself as a medicine man and pretend (or be genuine) to be in to all that new age stuff and prescribe 'potions' and the like that are evidence based. Hippies would love you.

That's basically for herbal medicine though, which is the area I was most interested in, which encompasses herbal preventative medicine, diagnosis and treatment of symptoms etc.

There are other areas of naturopathy such as acupuncture, massage, magnetic fields or whatever, which I wasn't at all interested in, yet are required parts of the course.

Anyway, employment prospects are lame, and the money is shit, especially considering you have to do a degree and graduate diploma to be a 'certified' naturopath.

I am from the same country as you and I was giving this exact same field of endeavour serious consideration just recently.

What you have to do is do a degree in Applied Science (Naturopathy), which I THINK is 4 years (might be 3?) and then after that you do a graduate diploma in naturopathy which is 1 year. You need the graduate diploma in order to be certified by the (non government recognised) boards to get registered as a practicing naturopath.

This degree is not offered at many places. I think in Sydney it is only offered at UWS Milperra.

You can do an advanced diploma at TAFE which will then set you up to do the graduate diploma at uni, or you can do the advanced diploma through a registered training organisation such as a naturopathy college which will also set you up for the grad dip at uni.

If I was you I would do it at university as it has a greater value to Joe Public. I think the UAI cutoff is 70.5, so it's pretty easy to get in to.

From memory the course has stuff in it like remedial massage, western herbal medicine (which is basically evidence based herbal medicine with old wives tales thrown in, so you will get your Chinese medicine in there, but not from a Chinese perspective), acupuncture, herbal preventative medicine and other stuff. I think oriental traditional medicine is also included but very briefly. There are certain electives you choose apart from the required course work which will determine what area you will work in once you finish, if you decide to be a specialist naturopath.

Employment prospects are shit, which is why I decided not to pursue it. You will likely end up working in a chemist (pharmacy) giving advice to people who come in and look at the herbal medicine, or if you are very very lucky work somewhere like a sports injury centre, a health resort or an actual naturopathy clinic (very unlikely as they are nearly always owner operated, and far and few between, the market just isn't there). If you want to be a fair dinkum naturopath you would want to open your own practice, but in order to attract clients you would need to offer them something more than just naturopathy, say a medical graduate who is also a qualified naturopath, or a pediatrician, or an optometrist, or a cardiologist, basically a qualified MD who gives out advice for conditions using traditional approaches, who would NOT be the patients regular GP/specialist and would instruct them to consult with their GP or specialist before commencing with alternative therapies to make sure there is no contraindication (is that the right word?) with any other medicines they are currently on.

Or you could style yourself as a medicine man and pretend (or be genuine) to be in to all that new age stuff and prescribe 'potions' and the like that are evidence based. Hippies would love you.

That's basically for herbal medicine though, which is the area I was most interested in, which encompasses herbal preventative medicine, diagnosis and treatment of symptoms etc.

There are other areas of naturopathy such as acupuncture, massage, magnetic fields or whatever, which I wasn't at all interested in, yet are required parts of the course.

Anyway, employment prospects are lame, and the money is shit, especially considering you have to do a degree and graduate diploma to be a 'certified' naturopath.

None of that seems to match up with the research I've done. Up here (QLD) we have the Australian College of Natural Medicine, which offers straight up natmed degrees 4 years. Employment prospects aren't too bad, considering I'd be self-employed anyway, I fully intend to start my own business doing it, I've got mates doing massage, yoga & acupuncture so we're going to set up some sort of wellbeing clinic type thing. As far as I know, no massage therapy is included in my course, apart from an elective, though I'd most likely take advanced iridology over massage as I'm doing a cert IV in remedial massage then an advanced diploma of traditional chinese therapy (acupressure & massage).

I really don't understand what you're talking about when you say there's no market. In my area right now there's almost one naturopath per suburb. You've just got to find a good location, and like you said, provide people with something else to draw them in. Every person I've asked about natural medicine, who's actually been to some form of practioner, has nothing but good things to say about them. That, coupled with the increasing attraction in the west to all things eastern, I can see a growing market, but maybe I'm just seeing what I want to see.

If you have any actual sources to back up your information, I'd appreciate it.

Every person who has been to one is going to say good things about it, namely because it works, and also because they are inclined to go in to that sort of thing anyway.

The nearest naturopath to me is about 25 minutes drive away, and it's a little home office thing.

I don't have any sources it's just what I looked up and what I've heard from people.

http://handbook.uws.edu.au/hbook/course.asp?course=4597

Looks like they got it at Campbelltown now too. That is the course I was referring to.