Integrative Medicine collaborates with conventional and alternative medicines to address the biological, psychological, environmental, social and spiritual aspects of health and illness.
The Defining Principles of Integrative Medicine
- The quality of the practitioner-patient relationship is an essential contributor to the healing process.
- Illness is a dysfunction of the whole person, rather than simply a physical disorder or a random isolated event. All factors that influence health, wellness and disease are taken into consideration.
- Practitioners utilize all appropriate healing sciences to facilitates the body’s innate healing response.
- Effective interventions that are natural and less invasive are used whenever possible.
- Integrative Medicine is evidence-based and open to new models of care.
- Practitioners educate patients and the community on health risks and disease prevention.
- Encourages a collaborative approach to patient care among practitioners.
- Practitioners work toward the personal incorporation of the principles of Integrative Medicine to lead patients by their own example and lifestyle choices.