Presented by SIOMI on 3rd of December in Firenze
“Manifesto” on Integrated Medicine
Published on HIMed, 2011, 2: 1-48
- Integrated Medicine promotes alliance among healthcare resources all harmonised together in a non-contradictory manner, accrued in various disciplines belonging to different areas and cultural backgrounds, and today known as Biomedicine and CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicines).
- Its premises include the relationship, centrality, complexity and globality of the individual, the scientific nature of the practices, joint responsibility for the individual’s care or health, the view of illness as a phenomenon co-emerging from a multitude of different factors, and the pursuit of health as a priority.
- Integrated Medicine recognises the individual as a combination of body, mind and soul related to their own personal history and to the environment, and it considers the current division among the various therapeutic models as an obstacle to be overcome in the perspective of reciprocal assistance.
- The citizen’s freedom of healthcare choice is a right that should be upheld and protected, together with the recognition of the physician’s freedom of therapeutic choice. The personal, cultural and spiritual beliefs of each individual affects the interpretation and experience of illness and healing.
- Integrated Medicine includes the meaning of health and healing together with the meaning of illness and treatment. Each patient is simultaneously the subject affected by the illness, and the subject capable of expressing potential self-healing that must be taught and adequately upheld.
- Integrated Medicine promotes research on the effectiveness and safety of healthcare irrespective of the diversity of the paradigms of the various models of therapeutic practice. The disciplines admitted in the Integrated Medicine model must be guarantors of suitable levels of theoretical and practical safety and effectiveness.
- Integrated Medicine brings together the values expressed by citizens with the professional values of the physician and every healthcare worker in satisfying the criteria of social justice and maximum sustainability.
- Integrated Medicine creates a syncretic encounter among different models of medicine, made necessary by the new knowledge accrued over the last few decades regarding the living organism, and it is based on an interdisciplinary and non-hierarchical approach to the organisation of healthcare.
- The virtues of Integrated Medicine include the reasonableness of the use of scientific knowledge, understanding of the individual’s situation and problems, relational sensitivity to promote mutual understanding, prudence in deciding upon the necessary intervention, responsibility as the ability to predict the consequences of one’s therapeutic actions, the ability to listen and the value of the patient’s opinion and therefore, the understanding of language as the individual’s primary means of expression, a responsible and judicious use of technology, the relevance of therapeutic actions affecting the patient’s current situation, and the value of experience over every type of proceduralized knowledge.
Fonte: SIOMI Press
