Programme 5: Fit To Practise
Other Medicine transcript
How can you tell the healers from the charlatans? Who is fit to practise?
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Programme-by-programme
Programme 1. Why is CAM so popular?
Programme 2. How do we know if they work?
Programme 3. Does it matter how it works?
Programme 4. First, do no harm
Programme 5. Fit to practise
Programme 6. A marriage made in heaven?
A marriage made in heaven
Sometimes called "the Prince Charles approach", there's a move to try and integrate CAM and orthodox medical practices for the benefit of all - but like many unions, there is unease on both sides. Can we really say that CAM and mainstream medical practice is a marriage made in heaven?
Can anyone call themselves a homeopath or an osteopath? (Osteopathy was the first CAM to be properly regulated, and only those practitioners who have attained a prescribed level of training can call themselves osteopaths). What about crystal therapists? Doctors can go on day courses and call themselves acupuncturists, whereas traditional practitioners of Chinese medicine see their training as a lifelong project.
How does regulation in the CAM world compare with the “conventional” medical world? How have internal political power struggles within CAM slowed progress in this area? The House of Lords Select Committee report recommends that each therapy should have a single regulatory authority with clear guidelines on competency and training – how likely is that, and what are the hurdles? At the moment, most practitioners are free to practise as they like after they are qualified – should CAM therapists be subject to the same sort of five-yearly revalidation that doctors now have to undergo?
We speak to students of CAM at various stages of their training – comparing, say, the four year or longer training in osteopathy with a two day course in aromatherapy massage. Given that many therapies incorporate a considerable element of diagnosis, some have argued that therapists should do more basic medical science training (in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and pharmacology). Is this another example of medical colonialism?
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Content last updated: 08/09/2004
