“Integrated Medicine is a synergistic and harmonious combination of conventional
and complementary medicine within a safe environment.”

The study of Integrated Medicine has been rapidly gaining popularity since the last decade. The drive towards integrated medicine is the compelling need for health practitioners to learn new ways to facilitate individualized care, as well as encourage a need for patients to accept greater responsibility for their our health. Being and feeling healthy is more than just being well physically. We are more than just the physical body, and Optimum health and well-being also encompasses our mind and spirit. Integrated medicine is the merger of two worlds, old and new, opening the mind to the widest possibility of achieving wellness. An integrated approach is not meant to replace conventional medical treatment. Instead, it is the combination of conventional and complementary medicine to create the best possible solution for the individual’s health challenges.

IM recognises the individual to be unique and understands that a person’s well-being is dependent on many aspects of their life. This includes not just their health, but also relationships and lifestyle. Identifying the individual’s need is the key to initiating healing. Maintaining a balance between conventional medicine and CAM is at the core of good IM practice.

Key components of IM are:

• Holistic needs assessment
• Co-existence: Most appropriate treatment choice CAM or conventional or both, without any subservience to either schools of thought.
• Treatment choice based on individual need and evidence.
• Synergy: clinical outcomes are greater and exceed the sum of the individual treatments or therapies.
• Harmony: ensuring concordance between treatments or therapies.
• Healing of the mind, body and spirit.
• Safety
• Effectiveness.
• Quality of life.

Integrated Medicine embraces the art of working at a ‘human’ level to reach the person, rather than focusing on the disease. It demonstrates compassion, integrity, respect and empathy. It promotes self-care and self-responsibility, through the release of the individual’s own potential for self-healing. For each individual this process is unique. It is for this reason that unlike the prescription of medication, each Integrated Medicine therapeutic plan will be exclusive to the individual. Being and feeling healthy is more than just being physically well. We are more than just the physical body, and Optimum health and well-being also encompasses our mind and spirit.

Integrated medicine is the merger of two worlds, old and new, opening the mind to the widest possibility of acheiving wellness. An integrated approach is not meant to replace conventional medical treatment. Instead, it is the combination of conventional and complementary medicine to create the best possible solution for the individual’s health challenges. At all and any stage, there is consideration of and input from both medicines to ensure that there is synergy and complimentarity between the two, taking into account any particular aspects of safety and guidelines.

“Medicine is not only a science, but also the art of letting our own individuality interact with the individuality of the patients.”
Albert Schweitzer