I was a nurse for 23 years, fair enough. Spent years doling out medication.
However, since I came to complementary therapies I personally find my knowledge has grown leaps and bound both about conventional and complementary medicine.
I believe that there are many things that, at present, cannot be explained in a way that conventional medicine understands which is why the medics often poo-poo what we do.
That said, over the past 10 years I have been privy to some wild statements by CT's that have concerned me too.
I don't feel that either disciplines have all the answers either right or wrong and even research in medicine is very much in it's infancy (for example that antibiotics were the answer to all bacterial infections only to find that bacteria mutate ergo the antibiotic era has been very short in terms of years).
Only recently, nutritional therapists came under fire from a Which report which stated that much of what was told to clients was either dangerous or unsubstantiated, however, it could be argued that the report was extremely biased.
As a therapist who has had/has a conventional medicine background, how do you relate to your more science based background with that of what would be considered to be by conventional medicine "unsubstantiated" therapies? 🙂
Patchouli
Hi Patchouli
From reading the many post on this forum and talking to traditional and medically orientated practitioners, it seem to me that someone who has gone through the medical science approach, has more difficulty in changing their understanding to suit the requirements to work with the traditional approach, than someone who has a traditional understanding would have in embracing the alternative approach offered by modern medicine, one perceives an alternative, where as the other tries to make the alternative fit their existing model by conceiving it as a complementary practice to what they already have.
I think that using the terminology 'conventional medicine' is incorrect, it portrays the idea of that is the way that it has always been, but modern medicine is not conventional at all, it is the new kid on the block and works in almost the reverse to the conventional healing approach of treating the person, so the correct terminology IMO would be to classify the modern medical science way of treating the disease as an alternative approach to what has been traditionally practised for thousands of years. 🙂
Likewise the terminology of 'complementary' is also incorrect, for to be complementary, something would have had to have been created after modern medicine was created, to work alongside modern medicine and complement it, but the majority of what is classified as 'complementary' have their roots going back many thousands if not millions of years, they do not complement modern medicine at all, they offer a traditional alternative to it.
Please do not get the impression that I am knocking modern medicine for it has its place and uses, what I am saying is that modern medical science is a modern alternative to what has been serving mankind before the advent of modern medical science, it is not better or worse in what it does, it just does it differently and they are often at odds with each other. 🙂
Yes, it is a shame that often they are at odds with one another. Would it not be wonderful if it was all encompassing and that people could choose the healing modality they perceived to be best for them and the financial outlay was all the same (i.e. either NHS financed or no NHS taxes and we paid for what we chose).
I think many see it as "conventional" as it is mostly provided by the NHS.
I guess it is all political.
I suppose it's "conventional" because it's a "convention", a meeting together or an agreement, as my dictionary suggests 😉
This is something I face every day. I have gone f rom a scientific conventional approach with pharmacy to an intuitive spiritual approach with reiki.
I don't find any conflict and feel the two are complementary