Integrative medicine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Integrative medicine has been criticized for compromising the effectiveness of mainstream medicine through inclusion of ineffective alternative remedies,[5] and for claiming it is distinctive in taking a rounded view of a person's health.[6]
Pronunciation: /ˈɪntɪɡrətɪv/
Definition of integrative in English:
adjective
1Combining two or more things to form an effective unit or system: an integrative approach to learning
I've been hearing a lot about Integrative Healthcare recently and even received an invitation to attend a symposium in Toronto in the fall. If it didn't cost five hundred bucks to attend I might have gone to it, even though I am retired. You see, I practiced Integrative Medicine for fifty-five years before they had even conceived of Integrative Healthcare, let alone given it a name. It used to be called General Practice and included application of state of the art medical knowledge, with help from physicians who had special training in rare and complicated cases. When Family Medicine and its training programs arose in the sixties, emphasis was placed on 'the whole patient and wellness'. There were many areas where the knowledge was not what we would call today 'evidence based'. Much of it was empirical, the result of observation and experience. Unfortunately, nowadays little consideration is given to knowledge gained in that way and it has to pass the evidence-based' test to become accepted practice. A group of health 'experts', many of them not physicians, now want to integrate 'complementary therapists' into mainstream medicine. Sounds like the initiatives of a few years ago, to establish teams without captains and many of us know how that worked out. (In the old less politically correct but more truthful days we called that 'too many chiefs and not enough Indians' now there are only Chiefs!) Each of these changes have in the long term increased the gap between health provider and patient. The larger the administrative structure, the greater the space between the patient and the physician.(Smith's Law.) Ever try to phone a physician these days?
Some complementary care is valid, much is not. Let us subject it to the same critical evaluation as approved medical treatments. Let us not buy the whole deal otherwise Integrative Medicine may become Fragmentive Medicine.
Make a comment,anonymous if you wish. I want to know what you think.
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