INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE


THE PRINCIPLES OF INTEGRATIVE MEDICINE:

  • A partnership between patient and practitioner in the healing process.
  • Appropriate use of conventional and alternative methods to facilitate the body's innate healing response.
  • Consideration of all factors that influence health, wellness and disease, including mind, spirit and community as well as body.
  • A philosophy that neither rejects conventional medicine nor accepts alternative therapies uncritically.
  • Recognition that good medicine should be based in good science, be inquiry driven, and be open to new paradigms.
  • Use of natural, effective, less-invasive interventions whenever possible.
  • Use of the broader concepts of promotion of health and the prevention of illness as well as the treatment of disease.
  • Training of practitioners to be models of health and healing, committed to the process of self-exploration and self-development