Editorials

Editorial Issue 24

This issue of Positive Health carries an extended special feature regarding Nursing in Complementary Medicine, to acknowledge and honour the vanguard role that nurses are playing in taking complementary therapies and adapting them to everyday treatment and care within the NHS, midwifery and private nursing. One of the main criticisms often levelled at complementary medicine is that its patients tend to be those who are well-off, willing and able to pay for private treatment, and that its practitioners do not have to work within the somewhat straitjacketed conditions of the NHS. Progress in tackling tough policy decisions and guidelines has been genuinely impressive as can be seen in the articles spanning pages 14–33.

Editorial Issue 23

As a child during the 1950s, the treatment for earache was the application of heated oil ear drops. In the days before the widespread use of antibiotics, having a cold meant staying in bed and putting up with the discomfort and deafness of cotton wool plugs in your ears to stop the oil from running out. Although I didn’t like the ear drops, in retrospect this low-tech treatment was less damaging to health than antibiotics fed to children today.

Editorial Issue 22

I and others of like mind have been railing against the hopelessly divided systems of “orthodox” and “complementary” medicine for more than a decade. Now, finally, the new buzzword is ‘integrative medicine’, and not a day too soon in my opinion.
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Editorial Issue 21

I suppose that I behave like most other people when hit by a particular health problem. On the one hand, I am driven to discover the nature and diagnosis of the problem to satisfy my medical and scientific curiosity, and on the other, I secretly hope to be magically (and quickly) healed by some practitioner who could just look at me, know what is wrong and fix it painlessly. Unfortunately, I have been seeking these wonderful all-seeing, all-knowing practitioners all my life – if you ever meet one of them, please send me their details.

Editorial Issue 20

Dreams, Visions, Goals. These are the stuff which inspire and motivate us, fire our passion and spirit and, through our conscious and unconscious actions, ultimately determine and create our reality. Our rich unconscious repertoire of symbolic imagery – used as metaphor – can also help to guide us to solve physical or emotional problems, a process beautifully described by Kendall Dowie (see page 5).

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