Interview with Marcus Sorensen

Marcus Bach Sorensen

 

 

Just finishing the first year of medical school (MBBS) at King's College London

 

 

It was high time! After various forays into the complementary therapy field, including diplomas in Sports and Remedial Massage Therapy, Cognitive-Behavioural Hypnotherapy, Reiki and Brennan Healing Science, my integration of this skill base with allopathic medicine and surgery seemed like the logical next step. It all contributes to the big picture of how best to help my clients - who are incidentally called 'patients' in the NHS, but thinking of them as 'clients' can sometimes be a reminder of the equal relationship I like to have with them.

 

 

So far, the main opportunity to learn about CAM at King's College London has been through the Student Selected Components in the curriculum, which students dedicate a few weeks to every year. However, there may be just a handful of CAM-related topics from hundreds of possible  components, so CAM is by no means a compulsory part of medical students' education at King's. It seems that even Psychiatry is verging on being considered a bit "complementary" sometimes in medical school circles.

 

However, for students who are interested in CAM, there are opportunities to learn about it if they seek them out beyond the main curriculum.

As a patient, I have tried to create an integrated approach for myself by having a 'healing team' from several different modalities around me. However, I have not yet contrived to get them all talking together to plan an overall healthcare protocol for me, so I am doing that part of the coordination myself. As an example, I have worked with craniosacral and naturopathic therapists before having surgery, and received energy healing and remedial massage afterwards to aid recovery, while also following the advice of my surgeon and GP. As a therapist, I have also had the privilege of helping clients prepare for surgery using hypnotherapy, remedial massage and energy healing techniques, and once I have qualified as a medical doctor, I look forward to offering an even more integrated service for my clients, so they can receive support on the levels that are most meaningful to them.

A bit like architecture or sculpture, a client's overall wellbeing is easier to take in when I see it from a variety of perspectives. To me, an integrated approach is having the willingness to take that metaphoric walk with the client, stop and discuss the views from different places, and work out with them which modalities could help both generally and specifically, based both on the client's belief system and best current clinical practice.

Why did you join the student network and what would you like the student network to achieve in the future?

I tend to have a lot of conversations about integrated health with my medical student and complementary therapy colleagues, so I joined the FIH student network to get involved with even more conversations. I believe integrated health is intrinsic to the future of healthcare, and I hope the FIH student network will allow people to broaden their horizons on this topic in a fair and balanced way, and make decisions for themselves about their future practice. With every generation comes the opportunity for profound change.