Small needles, great effect - from disbelief to recognition

No side effects

Frida van Jaarsveldt is working at a gynecologic ward as a nurse and is a student at the school. Her employers are paying for her education.

"At the hospital where I work all of our midwifes uses acupuncture, but at the ward where I work, none of us could do that. So I talked with my leaders and they thought it as a good idea to start using acupuncture - not only in treating the pregnant women, but also to relieve cancer patients of their pain," she said.

Patients with serious diseases mostly are only treated with medicine, which often has severe side effects. Acupuncture offers an alternative instrument to help the nurses to treat their patients in the best possible way.

"One of the great benefits to acupuncture is that it has no side effects and that means we can give our patients a more gentle treatment instead of filling them with medicine," said Frida van Jaarsveldt.

MD Ole Dahl shows Chinese acupuncture charts at The Acupuncture School in Copenhagen of Danmark, Nov 2, 2010. [Photo/Xinhua]

Widely recognized

Acupuncture is used today in most hospitals in Denmark and included as part of the offers to patients. Midwives in maternity departments benefit greatly from the small needles when they need to help pregnant women, but acupuncture is still increasing.

"Fortunately doctors have come to realize that the scientific evidence that the medical community generally supports itself by, don't apply equally to acupuncture. The establishment has gotten aware of the possibilities of the traditional Chinese medicine, and I am convinced that we have only seen the beginning here in Denmark, when it comes to use methods other than those which we have used so far," says Dahl.