Practice Spotlight – Education, Assistance and Advocacy: MTAM’s Role

MTAM often get asked questions about what we do as an association, and there are often misconceptions about the role of a professional association. MTAM’s mission is to empower our members with responsive practice assistance, ongoing professional development, and advocacy. 

Practice assistance can include providing guidance around the following areas: 

• Dealing with difficult work situations such as inappropriate clients or challenging coworkers 

• Setting up a home-based or mobile business 

• Reviewing contracts or employment agreements 

• Forms, templates and business set up  

• GST and income tax resources 

• Assistance with insurance company audits 

MTAM advocates on your behalf! We are in contact with the Minister of Health’s office to advocate for regulation to become a priority for the government. MTAM is also involved with CMTA’s application to have GST removed from massage therapy and thereby having massage therapy recognized as health care and not a service. We are also in contact with third-party insurance companies such as Blue Cross to ensure that MTAM members and clients can claim a wide range of massage therapy services.

Did you know that MTAM will host over 70 professional development courses in 2024! That’s more than any other provincial association. Courses range from one-hour webinars to 4-day courses to meet everyone’s educational goals and budget. We vet all our presenters to ensure that you’re getting qualified instruction in areas that are within scope of practice. We do the leg work, so you don’t have to wonder about the quality of education. In the past some courses rarely, if ever, came to Manitoba meaning if you wanted to participate you would need to pay for airfare/travel/hotel costs on top of your registration fee. MTAM acts on member feedback to bring popular presenters and courses to you so that you can save money and time.

MTAM also promotes the use of massage therapy to the public. We’ve promoted massage therapy using TV, radio and newspaper ads, doing interviews and volunteering at events such as Challenge for Life and the World Police and Fire games. We also provide free educational materials to our members to promote massage therapy.  

RMTs are awesome and MTAM wants the public to know more about our members and the great work they do. We promote them during Massage Therapy Awareness week and throughout the year to highlight your unique practices around the province.

These are just a few of the things we work to provide for our members. There are many other resources we provide members. Log into your member portal to discover more.