Integrative medical doctors?aPublic health practitioner or lifestyle coach?

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• 作者：Karen F. Willis^a ; ^{Karen.willis@sydney.edu.au} ; Jo-Anne Rayner^b ; ^{J.Rayner@latrobe.edu.au}
• 关键词：Integrative medicine ; Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) ; Sociology ; Public health ; Empowerment ; Individual responsibility
• 刊名：European Journal of Integrative Medicine
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：February, 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：5
• 期：1
• 页码：8-14
• 全文大小：253 K

文摘

Introduction

A holistic approach to medical care is a key component of integrative medical practice. As an alternative to biomedical emphasis on illness and disease, integrative medical practice focuses on wellness. Principles of vitalism and humanism inform complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) approaches to health and healing, thus integrative medical practitioners have capacity to extend ideas of healing from the individual biology to broader public health trends and concerns.

Methodology and approach

We report on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 23 integrative medical doctors. Our research explored how they drew on CAM philosophical approaches to health and healing and how such approaches shaped their approach to practice.

Results

Integrative medical practitioners draw on CAM to understand causes of health problems, approaches to healing, and the role of the individual in healing. The key tenets of the philosophical approach identified by doctors were holism, vitalism, and empowerment. These notions inform their health practice. They focus on helping patients to become actively engaged in their health, in particular, in lifestyle change. These doctors see their practice as distinctly different from biomedicine, seeing biomedicine as too limited to in its approach.

Conclusions

While the principles underpinning CAM may open up opportunities for integrative medical practitioners to take a public health stance in their work, this approach is limited. Integrative practitioners see their approach as different to their biomedical peers, but their capacity to re-orient health from cure to prevention is often limited to notions of lifestyle advice and individual responsibility for health and healing.