Editorial Issue 74 |
The current healthcare system is light years from being integrated, vis à vis Orthodox and Complementary disciplines. This can be exemplified by reading comments from some of the letters generated in the Sunday Times serialization of The Living Proof by Michael Gearin-Tosh (see Review), as well as the Letter by Cancer Nurse specialist Patricia Peat "…I have been completely stonewalled by the doctors and nurses in the NHS; patients receiving unbiased, truthful information are not something they have so far welcomed…" To my mind, there are complete paradigm shifts which need to happen to build a fundamentally healthy population and a healthcare, not a sickness system perpetually stretched to the breaking point under the insatiable demands of increasingly sicker people: * At the moment, according to the politicians, it would appear that the more resources spent on performing operations and 'fixing' sick people, the better the healthcare system. In my eyes, the exact opposite should prevail. The best healthcare system in an ideal world would have the majority of people being healthy and rarely needing medical care, except for emergencies, acute epidemics and problems arising from their daily life; In an ideal world, complementary therapies would become recognized healthcare disciplines within the medical system, and practitioners would graduate and be able to get jobs within the NHS and pursue their chosen therapies, whether it be aromatherapy, reflexology, osteopathy or nutrition. They would then be supervised by medical colleagues, their patients benefiting from the expertise available to the orthodox and complementary worlds; * In the current system, conventional doctors learn very little about non-orthodox methods. In my ideal world, doctors would recognize each of the complementary disciplines as specialities within the global medicine system. With all due respect to the current healthcare system, it is easier to make a wish list than to carry it out; however, if we never change our priorities, we will never move in the right direction. Within this issue, there are heartening examples of real-life projects which are attempting to produce integrated medical practice, as exemplified in Dr Rosy Daniel's article Healthy Bristol – Integrated Medicine Project, as well as the invaluable book Integrating Complementary Therapies in Primary Care. This book, which I would urge every practitioner to read, has been 5 years in the making, and explores and documents the considerable progress in the myriad of issues to be confronted by both primary care doctors and complementary practitioners who wish to work together in a clinically meaningful way. |