Teaching Integrative Medicine

Integrative medicine is defined as healing-oriented medicine that takes account of the whole person, including all aspects of lifestyle with the goal of optimal health, emphasizing the therapeutic relationship between practitioner and patient, informed by evidence, and making use of all appropriate therapies, including conventional and complementary and alternate medicine approaches.1, 2 IOM’s definition emphasizes “therapeutic factors known to be effective and necessary for the achievement of optimal health throughout the lifespan.

The emphasis of IM on the relationship between patient and physician4 has to some extent hindered efforts of truly integrating all of the modalities of healing within the context of populations. Furthermore, little attention has been devoted to teaching the principles of IM to medical learners because of the unfamiliarity with the scientific evidence and slow-growing empiric basis for improved clinical outcomes.