PRINCIPLES of PRACTICE:
Collaborative: The practice of medicine is both an art and a science. It requires a doctor to both listen to, and partner with, their patient to find the best possible avenue for desired outcomes of health and disease.
Broad thinking: Much of our current medical system focuses on specializing in separate areas of health and disease. Often a holistic perspective is missing. My approach is to try to look with a person at their health concerns in context and with the broad perspective of how various aspects of their health care fit together.
Interdisciplinary: I do not think any approach of medicine has all the answers. I value a collaborative approach with other health providers and perspectives. I value an evidence based approach.
Use the lowest intensity of intervention needed to provide the most effective treatment.
An understanding that responsible medicine neither rejects nor looks uncritically at both conventional medical and alternative medical approaches.
Recognition of the limitations of the knowledge base of individual practitioners and of the medical system as a whole.
The path to better health includes a process of self-inquiry and includes work toward both great self-agency in addition to support from a broader personal and medical community.
It is necessary to consider the many factors that determine the maintenance of health, prevention of disease and the presence of disease itself. And that these can extend beyond the physical body and include society, mental and emotional factors plus the role of the spirit and spirituality.
Collaboration between patient and practitioner is necessary to facilitate a path to better health.
Patients know their bodies best. Practitioners are educators, guides and facilitators.
Whenever possible, focus on prevention.
Appropriate consideration of both conventional and alternative treatment options to support a person’s innate healing response.
People are individuals and much of medical research is focused on groups. Consideration of an individual’s response is necessary to help guide clinical practice.
Acknowledgement that quality medical approaches are based on open inquiry, including consideration of high quality science, with use of both observation, repeatability and rationality to guide new inquiry.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES:
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: Guiding principles are just principles. In a visit, an individual person is looking for information and results. The visit should be focused on helping the patient move their goals forward whenever possible
