Integrative Medicine and Health Care Settings

Integrative medicine (IM) is a relationship-based model of care that promotes whole-person health across the life span by attending to all facets of a person's life that interact to influence health and disease processes, including biological, psychological, social, and spiritual domains. IM emphasizes preventive care to advance the health of the body as opposed to waiting for disease to develop. Providers of IM assume that all individuals have the capacity to heal, and the goal is to work with patients to create a healing environment. Several key principles guide the IM approach, including the following: (a) providing personalized, patient-centered care; (b) developing a strong patient-provider partnership; (c) employing conventional and complementary and alternative (CAM) therapeutic practices as appropriate; and (d) emphasizing continuity of care within ...