Finding the 'missing core elements'

 As a hospital doctor since 2006 I have become increasingly aware of core missing elements within conventional medicine. The significance of these omissions and their potential to hinder the flourishing of good health has led me to the study of Integrated Medicine.

Alongside my hospital work, I am also a practising clinical hypnotherapist and pure hypnoanalyst in London, giving me the first glimpses of the conditions that can be overcome by working with the mind alone.

Over the next two years I look forward to practising as a more complete doctor, with a greater understanding of the aetiology and nature of disease, as well as developing management skills beyond pharmacological prescription and surgical intervention alone. Follow my monthly blog here as I progress through the course!

Beginnings

Amazing! Having been signed up for over a year and a half, the moment we had all been waiting for finally arrived - the first week of this pioneering and exciting new venture. A leap of faith is perhaps the very least that could be used to describe leaving the stability of the well-established and financially secure NHS to embark upon this uncharted journey. 

Yet even at the beginning of those 18 months, when the idea of the course was still in its infancy, I was hooked, waiting as impatiently as a child waits for Christmas.

Meanwhile the faculty worked tirelessly, sourcing its funding and transforming the course into a university-accredited Diploma in the Study of Integrated Medicine. The diploma is a two-year course for doctors and nurses with weekly residential teaching modules five times per year, each a week long in duration. These are complemented by a weekly on-line home-study programme in between, as well as regular telephone mentoring.

What is more, the path is set for its graduates to progress to MSc level in 2011 and from there further to a PhD for those so inclined!

I was certainly not alone in my excited anticipation. A 22-strong student body of doctors, nurses and a pharmacist, embodying a broad range of experience levels and skills from both home and abroad, came together for the first week of the UK’s first ever formal training in Integrated Medicine.

Dr. Rosy Daniel, our course leader and great inspiration, led us through a week of intense learning (08.30h to 22.00h as standard!) as we sat humbled and privileged before teachers of a diverse and impressive wealth of expertise and understanding.

The quality of the lecturers was truly formidable. Their levels of knowledge and experience were second-to-none, as was their ability to communicate these to us as only the best of teachers can. For many of us, this was all very new material, but in fact, I don’t believe there was a single lecture that didn’t have us inspired and wanting more.

The first six months has an additional emphasis on our own personal development alongside our studies, in clear recognition of the fact that most healthcare professionals are not very well equipped to look after themselves.

While learning the many facets of the four quadrants of health we are supposed to be actively putting it all into practice, although the books piling up on my shelves are not making it easy!

It is remarkable how much you can learn in the right environment, alongside others with the same vision. One of the predominant feelings that I think has been shared by many of us on the course is one of relief: relief that practitioners are finally talking together in this way and relief to be among so many that share the awareness that there is a lot more that can be done in both the health setting and indeed society at large.