Bonnie Wright, DVM, DACVAA, cVMA, CVPP, CCRT, CCRP, discusses the prevalence of acupuncture use and availability of learning opportunities in a dvm360 interview.
Bonnie D. Wright, DVM, DACVAA, CVMA, CVPP, CCRT, CCRP, is a veterinary anesthesiologist and pain specialist and an educator with Evidence-Based Veterinary Acupuncture courses, based in Colorado and Hawaii. Wright recently led 4 continuing education (CE) sessions at the 2026 Veterinary Meeting & Expo (VMX) in Orlando, Florida, hosted by the North American Veterinary Community. Wright discussed the prevalence of acupuncture in veterinary medicine, and how to access educational opportunities to learn more about it, in a dvm360 interview recorded during VMX.
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The following is a transcript of the video shown:
dvm360: How prevalent is the use of acupuncture in veterinary medicine?
Bonnie D. Wright DVM, DACVAA: The prevalence varies a lot by area, so areas where there's programs teaching acupuncture, like Florida, Colorado as two examples, end up with a higher prevalence of people practicing and then, but if you then spread that over the US, it drops a bit, but there are over 2500 people that are certified in acupuncture across the US. So it's actually a fair number that spans small animal, equine, a number of people in academic sorts of positions, and then some much smaller amount doing other species. So I think it's more prevalent than we realize outside of the little acupuncture bubble. Because I think sometimes people don't talk about it as much because there's sort of been this thought that it's unscientific or alternative or complementary. So I think, I think maybe that's one of the reasons why it's probably more prevalent than someone outside of that bubble realizes.
dvm360: How can more students learn acupuncture for veterinary practice?
Wright: There are just a handful of schools that teach it within their curriculum. There's a bunch more—I think there were 24 of the US vet schools—that actually at least offer it for students to see in their clinical year. So in the clinical practice, you get up to a higher number by quite a bit. Some of the schools have pairings with the for-profit programs to get students into those programs. I think all of the programs that teach acupuncture as an add on, like a CE for veterinarians, do invite students and often give some sort of a discount to students so interested students can do it already, but it I'm hoping it gets a lot more common at the vet schools.
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