With all the debate over the health bill, perhaps now is the time to think carefully about how we deliver care to patients says Dr Karine Nohr
The College of Medicine recently held its inaugural conference, bringing together all sorts of clinicians, as well as, patients, researchers and policy makers. A lot of us in healthcare feel that we need to reflect and reconsider the way in which healthcare is currently delivered, particularly in view of the prevailing debate around the proposed health bill.
The aims of the College of Medicine are to creat a new vision of healthcare, that addresses issues such as preventative healthcare, holistic healthcare, complimentary therapies and community based healthcare, in a radical but practical and evidence based manner.
There were many eminent speakers, including Sir Graeme Catto, Professor David Colin-Thomé, Professor Dean Ornish, Sir Ian Kennedy, Professor Stephen Holgate, and others, who spoke variously about how medicine seems to have lost its way, about how the concept of care needs to be retrieved and also about various exciting and creative projects that are going on, up and down the country.
The movement for integrative medicine in the UK is not as well developed as that in the US, where I had the good fortune to undertake a fellowship in the subject. However, there is groundswell of people in this country who are recognising the need for us to take off our blinkers and review the deficits of our current medical system.
Not only do we need to reconsider our understanding of the origin of disease but we also need to reflect on issues such as sustainable healthcare and it's relationship to self-care, and be more broad-minded about different therapeutic options.
Dr Karine Nohr is a GP in Sheffield
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