How much clinical training will I get?
Clinical training is where the worry about "will I actually be ready to treat real patients" gets answered, and Five Branches builds in a lot of supervised hands-on time before you ever work with a patient on your own. Per the school's own DAcHM/MAcHM catalog (as we last checked it, 07/2026), clinical training runs about 1,005 hours (33.
Clinical training is where the worry about "will I actually be ready to treat real patients" gets answered, and Five Branches builds in a lot of supervised hands-on time before you ever work with a patient on your own.
Per the school's own DAcHM/MAcHM catalog (as we last checked it, 07/2026), clinical training runs about 1,005 hours (33.5 units), moving from observation toward independent work in stages:
| Stage | Hours | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Beginning Clinical Theater (FCL 100) | 45 | Watching live treatments, faculty-led |
| Clinical Theater (FCL 200) | 45 | Watching live treatments, faculty-led |
| Clinical Rounds (FCL 300) | 90 | Observation and assisting only — four to five students follow a licensed faculty practitioner, take and record patient history, take pulses, observe the tongue, and learn to fill an herbal prescription |
| Clinical Internship Rounds (FCL 400) | 270 | Hands-on treatment begins, under direct supervision |
| Clinical Internship (FCL 800) | 450 | Independent work, with a supervisor available |
| Clinical Integrative Intern Theater (FCL 750) | 45 | Cross-specialty case work |
| Clinical Grand Rounds (FCL 720) | 45 | Faculty-led case review |
| Three clinic competency exams + two orientations | 15 | Competency exams and orientations |
The specialization tracks (Sports Medicine, Five Element, Medical Qigong, Tuina) publish their own shorter courses under these same FCL 300 / 400 / 800 codes, running 45 to 96 hours, which is why smaller figures sometimes appear for the same course numbers.
Rounds and Internship sections are kept small — 4 to 8 students per section — so supervision stays close, not lecture-hall-sized.
To graduate, you'll need to personally perform at least 400 patient treatments under a faculty member's direct supervision. Up to 25% of clinical training can be completed through an externship — community clinics, Summit Medical Center, or a study-abroad placement — so it's not only campus-clinic hours.
One structural note that doesn't expire: the health centers at both campuses see a high daily patient volume, so there's a steady real-patient caseload to learn from rather than a thin trickle of cases.
Curious how that clinical arc compares across the acupuncture-only vs. herbal-medicine tracks, or more about what a typical week in the teaching clinic actually looks like?
Sources
- Five Branches University — Consumer Information checked 2026-08
- Five Branches University — Dac Mac Dual Degree Program 2 checked 2026-08
- Five Branches University, DAcHM-MAcHM-DAc-MAc-Catalog-2026-1, pp. 16-17 (Program Overview (www.fivebranches.edu) checked 2026-07
- Five Branches University — Tcm Clinical Training checked 2026-08
- The school's own published catalog and website checked 2026-07
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