Free Article Review About Complementary And Alternative Medicine

The National institute for Health defines complementary and alternative medicine as a range of health care approaches that consist of diverse medical, healthcare systems, practices and products that are normally not considered as part of the traditional medicine.
One of the major reasons patients do not disclose their use of CAM is because their healthcare provider does not ask them. Most patients perceive the role of the oncologist to be most concerned with cancer and its treatment. In addition, some patients do not know if they should disclose the use of CAM. Moreover, patients seem more likely to disclose CAM use to their healthcare provider when the provider involves the patient in treatment decisions. Other patients fear a negative response from their health care providers, a perceived sense that the health care provider may be indifferent or opposed to CAM.
The reasons to use CAM vary and include: some patients use it as a medical pluralistic approach to assist them to achieve a holistic well being in a better way or to relieve symptoms linked to chronic, terminal, illness or the side effects of traditional treatments for them (Chong, 2006). Numerous alternative therapies focus on enhancing relaxation and reducing stress. They may be helpful in calming a patient’s emotions, relieve anxiety, and increase the patient’s general sense of health and wellbeing. Certain alternative therapies can help to control some symptoms and side effects of cancer and treatments, for instance acupuncture helps to relieve sickness resulting from the use of certain chemotherapy medications as well as a sore mouth resulting from neck and head cancer treatment. Other patients use CAM because it gives them a greater sense of control, a more personal focus on health, and an increased use of health services. They believe that the use of CAM enables them have a transformational experience that changes their world view and allows them to have a greater control over their own health. For instance, when a particular patient is having traditional cancer treatment, sometimes it may feel as if the doctor makes many of the decisions about the treatment. It may seem that the patient does not have much control over what happens to him/her. Numerous individuals state that complementary medications enable them to be more actively involved in their treatment and recovery in partnership with their therapist (Boon, Verhoef, O'Hara, & Findlay (2004).
Clinical nurse practitioners are a trained group of nurses who spend most of their time in clinical problems. The clinical nurse practitioner is seen as central to the patient journey and an important player in the provision of quality care. This is achieved through the provision of patient support in the form of advice, skills, education, listening, organization of care, organization of referrals and follow-ups.
Integrated Medicine (IM) represents a recent but emerging field. Although there is an increasing body of literature on the effectiveness of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), very little evidence exist for integrative medicine. First, there is no clear definition about what comprises IM and no classification of IM practices has emerged yet to guide any research agenda. IM definition varies from simply integrating CAM into traditional medicine to the idea that integrative care comprises a new kind of medical practice that incorporates shared management of the patient, shared patient care, shared practice rules, and shared common values and goals. Moreover, integrative medicine and integrative healthcare appear to be two different words. Thus, the use of the term can refer to anything from institutional based delivery of care, provider centered care, or patient centered care. On the other hand, it is important to note that there is no empirical evidence about how often this new kind of medicine is found in actual practices. Chong (2006) has found that professionals working in multi-professional health care systems can differentiate between collaboration from integration. However, integration needs collaboration, but collaboration does not always involve integration. There is variation in the diversity and definition of integrative health care. The definition of integrative health care among researchers is still under debate.
Boon, Verhoef, O'Hara, & Findlay (2004) indicate that there is a growing body of institutionally based efforts to create IM. However, the issue is that as an emerging field, this kind of practice has an unclear definition organizationally. Many prototype organizations of IM have sprouted and they vary in whether they medically based, nursing based, or based on CAM providers. Moreover, they also differ on the type of business model they hold and the economic basis of the clinic, for instance fee-for –service or insurance-based care. Furthermore, they diverge also in their locations from hospital based or freestanding community clinics. In the case where they are a hospital-based IM institution, they vary in whether they are used as a teaching hospital attached to a university, a not-for –profit nonteaching hospital, or a profit-driven hospital. They also vary in the type of care they offer, from primary care to complementary therapy. In the hospital setting, they may be in a primary service where they offer different limited therapeutic services, for instance acupuncture for cancer patients with nausea; or they may be a different kind of patient management, for instance management of patients not responsive to biomedical care. A considerable variation for education occurs in IM clinics where there are those with formal residency programs and there are others with no educational component. They are also distinct in the principles that are used in determining what professions are included and what practices are allowed. There are those who include only evidence based practices while others include either practices in most demand by the public or practices that have stood the test of time.
Both Chong (2006) and Boon, Verhoef, O'Hara, & Findlay (2004) indicate that it is possible to integrate CAM and biomedicine both at the provider and patient level. The integration based on the provider may include incorporation of CAM directly into hospital-based programs and allowing a limited number of CAM providers such as chiropractors, naturopaths, and acupuncturists into traditional health centers. On the other hand, the integration based on patient may be used to incorporate various models. There is increasing evidence about CAM services that indicate that numerous patients design their own personal strategies for obtaining IM outside of institutional integration.
Although both articles indicate the reasons why majority of CAM patients do not disclose their use of these medications to their health care providers, they do not give evidence of the consequence of such behavior to the conventional treatment compliance.
It is possible for future health care practice to embrace and integrate a wide range of therapies and healing approaches that draw on both the technological advances of conventional medicine and the modern versions of the concepts of complementary and alternative medicine. This possibility of converging and integrating various cultures of traditional and complementary care leads to many questions for contemporary health care providers, for instance, what is integrative medicine, what are the implications for conventional health providers in terms of quality of care, training, resources, financial dynamics and legal issues? The above literature review on integrative Health Care has revealed that the reviewed articles concentrate on unfolding forms of practice and theoretical models in the presence of few studies. The absence of an agreement on understandable explanation and classification for integrative care is the main practical obstacle on carrying out systematic literature reviews in this rising field.

References

Chong, O. (2006). An integrative approach to addressing clinical issues in complementary and alternative medicine in an Outpatient Oncology Center. Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing, 10(1), 83–89.
Boon, H., Verhoef, M., O'Hara, D., & Findlay, B. (2004). From parallel practice to integrative health care: a conceptual framework. BMC health services research, 4(1), 15.