Delivering Health Care is Like Practicing a Religion
A former brother-in-law was a chiropractor. We never talked shop. I thought of us as representing two different rligions, belief systems about how the body works. But the longer I am in this business, the more I believe in our bodies ability to heal. If hypnosis can cure warts, we can’t be too rigid about how our patients tap into their own ability to feel better.
For centuries, the idea of “healing thoughts” has held sway over the faithful. In recent decades it’s fascinated the followers of all manner of self-help movements, including those whose main purpose seems to be separating the sick from their money. Now, though, a growing body of scientific research suggests that our mind can play an important role in healing our body — or in staying healthy in the first place.
I wrote about this in 2008 and I am even more relaxed now about patient seeking alternative methods to tap into their inherent abilities to heal:
You wouldn’t ask your rabbi how often you should go to confession, would you? Chiropractic and allopathic medicine are like two religions. We don’t speak the same language and we use different tools. But even though our practices are different, we ultimately work for the same higher purpose, and it may be that our differences are smaller than we were taught. We don’t know enough about each other’s practices to make specific recommendations, but support you, our patients, in your pursuit of better health and wellbeing.
So, still, while I support my patients pursuit of alternative ways of healing and gladly sign insurance authorizations for that, I have to admit that I feel uncomfortable choosing such practitioners. I just don’t know who is good and who is a good fit because we come from such different cultures, or different religions, for lack of a better word.