Integrative Medicine and Clinical Practice: Diagnosis and Treatment Strategies

Although the definition of integrative, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) remains under discussion by members of the clinical community, the medical literature contains few reports on the process of integration of CAM methods into clinical practice. This report describes a study of the clinical approach of holistic clinicians in one clinic over 14 months, based on selection of diagnoses and therapies. Methods included observations of clinical encounters and physician interviews. Findings suggest that physicians initially selected diagnoses and treatments that reflected their biomedical orientation. Subsequent diagnoses incorporated energy healing, homeopathy, and spiritual hypnotherapy. This gradual introduction of CAM modalities into practice allowed physicians to address body—mind—emotional and spiritual causes of disease. Incorporation of CAM modalities into clinical practice by these biomedically trained physicians with additional CAM experience gave them flexibility to offer patients different treatment options and alleviated the need to reconcile conflicting theories of disease etiology.