The Vision of Functional Medicine
This excerpt is a part of a white paper put out by the Institute of Functional Medicine. To see the paper in its entirety you can download it here. Wouldn’t this be nice!
“The doctor of the future will be an integrative healer whose practice differs in many ways from that of today’s typical physician. The doctor of the future will provide care that is patient-centered and comprehensive (body, mind, and spirit), care that is both high-tech (using genomic prediction tools, systems biology, and functional medicine, for example) and high-touch. Care will focus more extensively on preventing disease and injury.
The practice of the future will be provided by smoothly working teams that will include primary care physicians, complementary and alternative health practitioners, health coaches, and wellness mentors, as well as medical specialists, allied health and nursing practitioners.
Putting the patient in the driver’s seat allows representatives from any number of disciplines to serve as navigator through the healthcare system, helping people sort through conflicting data as well as the many difficult choices they must make during their lives in times of both wellness and illness. Tomorrow’s physicians will consistently assess new evidence, to ensure that their practices meet the highest standards of quality and patient outcomes.
To a great degree, the body has the capacity to heal itself; this concept, in some ways, opposes the mechanical model in which doctors act as fixers. One goal of future practitioners will be to guide and empower patients toward self-healing. Consonant with this approach will be use of prevention and health promotion, the full range of natural treatments, use of the safest and least expensive interventions first, and also the mobilizing of community and social support for healthy living.
This vision of the future doctor does not reflect a purely in-the-clinic model. Future clinicians, if they are to be integrative healers, need to be out where people are and to participate in social and environmental policy change.”
Tags: CAM, holistic, Natural Health Practices
Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Healing Innovations, Natural Health Practices | Penny | 
January 8, 2012 9:17 am
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