Table 1 Major cultural differences in corporate philosophy between conventional and complementary medicine
Conventional medicine | Complementary medicine | |
|---|---|---|
Values | ||
Philosophy of care | Positivistic approach [36]: | Holistic approach: Bio-psycho-spiritual-social model [35, 36, 45] |
• Importance is given to the knowledge of facts and experimental sciences [36] | • The whole is more than the sum of its parts | |
• The patient is given the undivided clinical attention of the physician [52] | • Body, mind and spirit are interrelated and must all be considered in healing | |
• Aims neither unilaterally at the body nor at the soul but treats the patient as a whole | ||
Philosophy of healing | • Health: − “A state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” WHO Constitution [39] = criticized definition [53] as static and accentuating only subjective aspects [39] | • Health, disease and therapy effects do not result solely from molecular interactions but also from the different causal interactions between these factors within the human being as a whole. [45] |
- Other definitions are “ex-negativo” explanation: [54] | • Healing = (re)establishment of the harmony between the functions of body, soul and spirit [45] | |
= Lack of deviance from biological norms [39], “Life with organ’s silence” [54] | • Disease = disequilibrium between biological, psychological, social and spiritual forces [55] | |
• Disease = deviance from biological norms [39] | ||
Norms - Therapeutic approach | ||
Disease-oriented [44] | Patient-oriented [44] | |
Specialization: | ||
• Opportunity for high competency in specialty fields [34, 39]; more efficiency [40] | • Patients’ involvement, empowerment and responsibility in the self-management of their illnesses [32, 34, 36, 42, 45] | |
• Self-regulation of the body and its healing power; enhancing natural body reactions [34] | ||
• Fragmentation of care (with communication and cooperation impediments) [34, 39] | • Symptoms seen as a message from the organism, similar to an SOS [35]; look at underlying causes [45] | |
• Risk of losing the overall vision [34] | ||
• Deductive [32] | • Inductive [32] | |
• Standardized [40] | ||
• More or less spiritual therapeutic approaches [38] | ||
Use of pharmacotherapy with predominantly proved effects [38] and high use of technology [43, 54] | Use of natural treatments and remedies [45] with less technical equipment than CM [45] | |
Focus more on structure than outcomes: | Focus more on outcomes than structure: | |
The quality of structure includes the personal, spatial, temporal, technical and organizational conditions of medical practice: availability, short waiting times, training and education [36] | Outcome quality refers to therapeutic goals, such as improving and healing, patient satisfaction and quality of life, encouraging health-related behavior and self-responsibility, stimulating self-regulation, prevention [36] | |