Standard of Practice: Advertising and Social Media

Patient Outcome

Patients receive accurate, clear, and trustworthy information about Massage Therapy services, enabling them to make informed choices about their care without encountering misleading, deceptive, or undignified promotions.

Registered Massage Therapist Outcome

The Registered Massage Therapist/Massage Therapist (RMT/MT) ensures all advertising related to their practice is factual, verifiable, easy to understand, not misleading or deceptive.

Requirements

The RMT/MT must:

1. Ensure that advertising is factual, easy to understand and not misleading or deceptive.
2. Respect patient choice and be appropriate to the context and medium (e.g., print or online) when promoting their practice. Massage Therapy advertisements must be factual, easy to understand, and identify the RMT(s)/MT(s) primarily responsible for the practice.

The RMT/MT may:

3. Use advertisements that include:
   1. general information about the practice, such as its location, accessibility, hours of operation, address and telephone number;
   2. information about the RMT’s/MT’s additional training in a particular area of practice;
   3. references to the Scope of Practice of Massage Therapy that the RMT/MT provides; and/or
   4. information on the types of services available.

The RMT/MT’s advertisements must not include any:

4. Information that is false, misleading or deceptive;
5. Information that the RMT/MT cannot verify;
6. Comparison to another RMT/MT or Massage Therapy practice that could be reasonably interpreted as a representation of superiority;
7. Undue pressure or promotion of unnecessary products or services;
8. Testimonials by anyone, including from existing or former patients, or their friends or relatives. RMTs/MTs should take all reasonable steps to disable social media functions that allow for testimonials, and/or remove the content, or disassociate it from pages related to their practice (General Regulation of the Massage Therapy Act, 1991);
9. Express or implied endorsement (or recommendation for the exclusive use) of a supplement, product or brand of equipment used to provide services;
10. Content that is undignified or that could negatively impact public confidence in the practice of the Massage Therapy profession;
11. References to other practice locations unless the RMT/MT practises at that location; and/or
12. Term, title or designation that states or implies the RMT/MT is qualified to practice in a specialty of the profession;
13. Display of the CMTO logo in RMT/MT advertisements, including websites or social media pages and/or accounts, as they may misleadingly imply an endorsement by CMTO. RMTs/MTs must only practise Massage Therapy using the names displayed on CMTO’s public register and any advertisements should only reference the RMT’s/MT’s names that are found on the public register.

Bolded terms are found in the Glossary.