Work with medical schools
In 2000 the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee recommended that medical schools should provide 'CAM familiarisation' so that doctors were better able to advise patients keen to take this route and help them make sensible choices.
FIH carried out a survey in 2006 and found that few medical schools had heeded the committee. It was also clear that the whole concept of integrated health and wellbeing was under-represented in medical school curricula.
Medical schools are an ideal place to introduce a vision of the healthcare system which has a whole-person approach - centred on prevention and listening to the patient, and underpinned by a common language. Complementary therapies are just one thread of a picture that aims at a whole-person approach to prevention and treatment.
There are a number of barriers to making this happen. Medical school curricula are heavily focused on the treatment of ill-health, rather than on preventing illness and exploring how patients can be actively involved in their own health and wellbeing. The majority of health professionals teaching in medical schools today do not have a working knowledge of the skills and experiences from other traditions of healthcare. There's also a lack of a common language which would help professionals from different traditions to communicate effectively with each other.
We hope to address these issues, and so deliver on our vision of an integrated healthcare system, by getting medical schools to include a module on integrated health and wellbeing in their programmes of study. We are currently developing a new curriculum module with Barts medical school.