Redesigning Health Education and Nurturing Professionals in Health And Healing

Have you ever wished that your doctor, nurse and other health care practitioners had a better bedside manner?

Dr. Bill Manahan and Dr. Adam Rindfleisch are co-founders of International Integrators and Living Whole, along with Dr. Kathryn Hayward and other colleagues. These three doctors have known one another for decades, each working within the conventional medicine system in the US to bring a more Whole Health approach to the systems within which they worked: Bill in Minneapolis, MN, Adam in Madison, WI and Kathryn in Boston, MA.

As three old friends and colleagues, Bill, Adam and Kathryn bring to this podcast some of the themes they have talked about for years as they work toward improving future health education and care for budding doctors, nurses and everyone interested in health and healing.

Here are some of the themes that will engage you as you listen to their conversation:

• What do Adam, Bill and Kathryn mean by the term Whole Health?
• What vital information did Bill learn when he made a home visit on a young patient who had asthma?
• How do adverse childhood experiences and social determinants of health relate to the health of Individuals?
• What is slow medicine?
• What is fast medicine?
• How have the illnesses of Americans and the practice of medicine In the US changed since the 1950s and 1960s? How has medical education evolved during that same period?
• Bill and Adam each had personal experiences that caused them to look beyond the borders of the conventional medicine system. How did those experiences influence the care that they now give themselves and their patients?
• What has been happening in the Veterans Administration (VA) system for the past seven or eight years with regard to Whole Health? How many patients have been reached through the Whole Health programs? How have veterans who were using opioids, getting medical care in emergency rooms and using pharmaceuticals been influenced by the Whole Health programs at the VA?
• What does it mean to include Energy Practices in support of health and healing?

The nurses began practicing healing touch. It is probably the reason that Energy Practices have gotten the status that they have, more than anything else, when suddenly tens of thousands of nurses were doing healing touch, and people who had problems for a really long time suddenly were better.
   

Bill Manahan, MD, on how nurses brought energy medicine into conventional medicine

• Why is skepticism important in looking at what should be offered in support of health and healing?
• Why are continuity of care and trust important elements of a primary care relationship?
• One criticism often aimed at people interested in Whole Health involves the assumption that there is a lack of evidence-based medicine. According to numerous studies, what percentage of medical care recommendations made by conventionally trained practitioners is actually based in science?
  • Scientific American (2011): Health Care Myth Busters: Is There a High Degree of Scientific Certainty in Modern Medicine?
  • “The Quality of Healthcare Delivered to Adults in the United States,” New England Journal of Medicine2003;348:2635-2645.)
  • British Medical Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine: How Good is the Evidence to Support Primary Care Practice? (2017)

• Why is it important for a clinician to combine evidence-based medicine with intuition?
• An idea that Bill has had for the past 10 or 15 years is that the primary care practitioner of the future will be a health coach. In this model, what would the role of the health coach be in the life of the individual and the family?
• Adam and colleagues are creating “a medical school like no other,” the first of its kind in the US. What does this mean? What are Adam and the team who are developing the Whole Health School of Medicine learning from studying innovative medical schools around the world?

We’re exploring how medical education looks in the future. I think there is a lot of room to do some reframing.
Adam Rindfleisch, MD