Integrative Medicine Patients Have High Stress, Pain, And Psychological Symptoms

Integrative medicine (IM) is a rapidly growing ?eld whose providers report clinical success in treating signi?cant stress, chronic pain, and depressive and anxiety symptoms. While IM therapies have demonstrated ef?cacy for numerous medical conditions, IM for psychological symptoms has been slower to gain recognition in the medical community. This large, cross-sectional study is the ?rst of its kind to document the psychosocial pro?les of 4182 patients at 9 IM clinics that form the BraveNet Practice-Based Research Network (PBRN). IM patients reported higher levels of perceived stress, pain, and depressive symptoms, and lower levels of quality of life compared with national norms. Per provider reports, 60% of patients had at least one of the following: stress (9.3%), fatigue (10.2%), anxiety (7.7%), depression (7.2%), and/or sleep disorders (4.8%). Pain, having both physiological and psychological components, was also included and is the most common condition treated at IM clinics. Those with high stress, psychological conditions, and pain were most frequently treated with acupuncture, IM physician consultation, exercise, chiropractic services, diet/nutrition counseling, and massage.With baseline information on clinical presentation and service utilization, future PBRN studies can examine promising interventions delivered at the clinic to treat stress and psychological conditions

The review of integrative medicine practice’s strengths and weaknesses worldwide

Integrative medicine practice or integrated medicine (IM) has been introduced as a new concept to emerge both conventional medicine (CM) and traditional/complementary medicine (T/CM).This integrated and accessible healthcare was useful in bridging the gaps between CM and T/CM.This study is conducted to gain understanding the concept of the integrated medicine practice in the perspective of strengths and weaknesses.To conduct in-depth understand on the current development of integrative Medicine practice, the study methods involve worldwide electronic database system for searching its strengths and weaknesses of the integrative medicine practice.In general, integrative medicine is demanded by a patient as a new concept of medicine in new millennium.It is providing all medicine basics that included CM and T/CM therapies that focus more on health and healing, more evidence base to T/CM therapies, as well as bridging the communication gaps between CM and T/CM physician.However, integrative medicine still has its limitation, especially CM physicians look at T/CM as a source of “cash cow” to attract more clients or patients to make more profit.Moreover, the malpractice issues also accrue due to the unmatured medical theory applies and the wrong emerging of medical theory usage.For instance, lack of evidential base in integrative medicine therapy and the difficulties to integrate multi medicine practice into the integrative medicine concept are the major challenges.Despite attempts to reveal integrative medicine strengths and weaknesses, its significant impacts upon individual or nationality still remain unknown.There are still many limitations to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the integrative medicine model implemented

Interprofessional Integrative Medicine Training for Preventive Medicine Residents

Integrative medicine training was incorporated into the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School Preventive Medicine residency at the Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences Newark Campus as a collaboration between the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and the School of Health Related Professions. Beginning in 2012, an interdisciplinary faculty team organized an Integrative Medicine program in a Preventive Medicine residency that leveraged existing resources across Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences. The overarching aim of the programs was to introduce residents and faculty to the scope and practice of integrative medicine in the surrounding Newark community and explore evidence-based research on integrative medicine. The faculty team tapped into an interprofessional network of healthcare providers to organize rotations for the preventive medicine residents that reflected the unique nature of integrative medicine in the greater Newark area. Residents provided direct care as part of interdisciplinary teams at clinical affiliates and shadowed health professionals from diverse disciplines as they filled different roles in providing patient care. The residents also participated in research projects. A combination of formal and informal programs on integrative medicine topics was offered to residents and faculty. The Integrative Medicine program, which ran from 2013 through 2014, was successful in exposing residents and faculty to the unique nature of integrative medicine across professions in the community served by Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences

Health Care Professionals’ Experiences Practicing Integrative Medicine

The practice of integrative medicine has regained popularity in recent years. As a theoretical framework, integrative medicine is a viable option to consider in place of a traditional medicine model from a patient satisfaction and cost savings viewpoint. The purpose of this paper was to explore the experiences and viewpoints of healthcare professionals in regards to practicing integrative medicine. The Health Belief Model was used as a conceptual framework. Using a quantitative design, health care professionals across a variety of disciplines were recruited from three agencies within the Midwest who currently provide services to patients with an integrative medicine model. A bivariate analysis of the findings was completed utilizing data gathered about health care professionals’ length in practice, professional education experiences and beliefs about factors that contribute to patient’s adherence to treatment plans. The findings reinforced existing research that in vivo educational experiences have great potential for providing health care professionals opportunities to practice integrative medicine across disciplines. The findings also confirmed that there is a further need for education about the integrative medicine model across all health care disciplines. These findings demonstrate the potential impact social workers can have in the field of integrative medicine through their holistic views of patients and their abilities to lead other health care professionals through promotion of patient health and satisfaction

Practising Integrative Medicine

HOSPITALS can be scary places, even daunting Images of grim faced doctors and nurses in white coats overcrowded wards and long hours of waiting to be treated are just some that crowd the brain when the word hospital is mentioned

Health Care Professionals’ Experiences Practicing Integrative Medicine

The practice of integrative medicine has regained popularity in recent years. As a theoretical framework, integrative medicine is a viable option to consider in place of a traditional medicine model from a patient satisfaction and cost savings viewpoint. The purpose of this paper was to explore the experiences and viewpoints of healthcare professionals in regards to practicing integrative medicine. The Health Belief Model was used as a conceptual framework. Using a quantitative design, health care professionals across a variety of disciplines were recruited from three agencies within the Midwest who currently provide services to patients with an integrative medicine model. A bivariate analysis of the findings was completed utilizing data gathered about health care professionals’ length in practice, professional education experiences and beliefs about factors that contribute to patient’s adherence to treatment plans. The findings reinforced existing research that in vivo educational experiences have great potential for providing health care professionals opportunities to practice integrative medicine across disciplines. The findings also confirmed that there is a further need for education about the integrative medicine model across all health care disciplines. These findings demonstrate the potential impact social workers can have in the field of integrative medicine through their holistic views of patients and their abilities to lead other health care professionals through promotion of patient health and satisfaction

Challenges of systematic reviewing integrative health care.

This article is based on an extensive review of integrative medicine (IM) and integrative health care (IHC). Since there is no general agreement of what constitutes IM/IHC, several major problems were identified that make the review of work in this field problematic. In applying the systematic review methodology, we found that many of those captured articles that used the term integrative medicine were in actuality referring to adjunctive, complementary, or supplemental medicine. The objective of this study was to apply a sensitivity analysis to demonstrate how the results of a systematic review of IM and IHC will differ according to what inclusion criteria is used based on the definition of IM/IHC. By analyzing 4 different scenarios, the authors show that, due to unclear usage of these terms, results vary dramatically, exposing an inconsistent literature base for this field

A systematic review of integrative medicine for opioid withdrawal

Introduction: The United States has been battling an opioid epidemic for decades. As substance use disorders have grown, so too has investigation into treatment options, including integrative medicine approaches, for managing opioid withdrawal symptoms (OWS). Objectives: This systematic review sought to assess the use of integrative medicine approaches for the alleviation of OWS in patients dependent on opioids and to summarize the available data. Methods: The authors searched using synonyms for opioids, substance use disorder, and integrative medicine and standardized searches in Embase, PubMed, and Cochrane Library. We also hand searched references for systematic reviews. This review did not include articles that could not be obtained as full-text publications via interlibrary loan. The review also excluded studies with interventions involving acupuncture because multiple systematic reviews on this approach already exist. In addition, we also excluded studies of therapy for opioid maintenance. We evaluated studies for inclusion based on the Jadad criteria. We compared opioid withdrawal outcomes of the studies to determine the efficacy of integrative medicine approaches. Results: The authors identified a total of 382 unique publications initially for possible inclusion through systematic searches. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, five studies met Jadad criteria. The authors identified an additional two studies for inclusion via hand searching. A total of seven studies included interventions consisting of passionflower, weinicom, fu-yuan pellet, jinniu capsules, tai-kang-ning, dynorphin, and l-tetrahydropalmatine. Analyzing the articles was difficult given the varied scoring methods they used to quantify opioid withdrawal symptoms and the small sample sizes in the trials. Most showed evidence that supported integrative medicine approaches for OWS, although the strength of evidence was limited because of sample sizes. Conclusions: This review found evidence of multiple integrative medicine approaches for opioid withdrawal symptoms. Well-designed randomized controlled trials should assess the efficacy of integrative medicine for improvement in OWS