Smart UK

General information

Who is SMART UK?
SMART UK is the country’s leading provider and clinical professional register of auricular acupuncture programmes for addiction and associated mental health issues.

SMART UK provides the benchmark for training in this field. Critically, continually assessing and undertaking research which enables evidence-based training with emphasis on clear good practice and client protection.

SMART UK has now trained over 11,000 professionals working across the spectrum of substance misuse and mental health services in their 19 years.

SMART UK oversees the Voluntary Self Regulation of their members that includes yearly re-assessment to stay on their register of members, codes of conduct, ethics and disciplinary procedures.

SMART UK has the largest membership, offers the most comprehensive training and has the best reputation. In fact because we have spent the last 19 years picking this treatment apart so that we can understand it completely, we now understand the clinical mechanisms of action and are able to pass this on to our candidates. Our ethos is ‘to observe, reason and experiment’ and in terms of how we pass this on in our training we hold true to old adage :-

‘Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will learn, involve me and I will remember’.

In fact SMART UK was created 19 years ago to directly address serious concerns within the NHS, about the knowledge base and clinical standards of the training in this treatment that was then available from elsewhere. The tutors have a combined experience of over forty years working in the addiction field as a foundation to this.

What sets SMART UK apart from its contemporaries is the depth and breadth of its training. The course provides an in-depth analysis of Chinese and Western medical acupuncture concepts, seeking to provide a realistic synthesis of Western addiction science with Chinese medical theory. In this way, students come to learn not just the acupuncture procedure, but to more completely understand the mechanisms of acupuncture with relation to patterns of behaviour from a modern scientific perspective.

This is why SMART UK is regularly chosen by organisations to train practitioners who may apparently have been trained previously elsewhere.

There is a good deal of research with regard to the mechanisms and effectiveness of acupuncture. SMART UK has collaborated on a psycho-social research project into our auricular protocol with HM Prison Service and in conjunction with the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University. This provided sound evidence for the validity and efficacy of our treatments. Future research projects include measurement of cortisol levels via saliva swabs and also undertaking research into the efficacy of the treatment with the armed forces for PTSD.

Since then SMART UK have published the definitive textbook on the subject ‘Auricular Acupuncture and Addiction’ by Elsevier, illustrating their groundbreaking hypothesis on addiction treatment .

We are happy to train any professionals working with client groups that we believe would benefit from the treatment. We have such solid training in all aspects of the treatment, health & safety procedures, addiction and mental health theory and good clinical governance that we can impart this knowledge clearly and safely wherever it is necessary. However we also teach the limitations and appropriate use of the protocol and so ensure the validity of its application and with our yearly assessments ensure these standards are not allowed to diminish.

SMART UK already have thousands of active members working throughout the NHS, Home Office, prison service, armed forces, the police, probation, community drug and alcohol services, specialist hospitals, PTSD specialist organisations, outreach services, children’s and young peoples’ services, residential services, homeless services and sex worker services – the list goes on.