Challenging integration: clinicians' perspectives of communicating collaboration in a center for integrative medicine.

A shift has occurred in the provision of health care to include a focus not just on biology and disease but also on the whole person, preventative care, and an array of healing modalities based on systems of beliefs and values not typically included within biomedical practice. This approach to health care, termed integrative medicine (IM), blends biomedicine with a broader understanding of patients and their illnesses, including elements of mind, body, and spirit that may be contributing to an ailment. While the use of integrative medicine has increased and centers for integrative medicine have proliferated within conventional health care organizations, distinct tensions arise from this amalgamation.

Trailblazing healthcare: institutionalizing and integrating complementary medicine.

Objectives: This study examines three integrative health centers to understand their (1) historical development, organizational goals, and modalities, (2) the processes and challenges of integrating complementary and allopathic medicine, while encouraging staff collaboration, and (3) how each center becomes institutionalized within their community.

Methods: We focus on three organizational case studies that reflect varying forms of integrative health care practices in three U.S.

"Open your heart first of all": perspectives of holistic providers in Costa Rica about communication in the provision of health care.

Research documents how the care the holistic providers offer represents the quality communication that patients often do not receive from their biomedical providers. However, research investigating the perspectives of holistic providers concerning the role they see themselves playing in the provision of health is limited. This research explores the perceptions of holistic providers in Costa Rica about their communication with their patients.

The call to Hawaii: holistic practitioners' perspectives of their communicative practices of healing.

The big island of Hawaii has been named the healing island - a place with varied interpretations of healing health, and a wide range of holistic health care practices. This research explores the perspectives of holistic providers about the communicative practices they believe are central to their interactions with patients. Intensive ethnographic interviews with 20 individuals revealed that they perceive their communication with clients as centered on four practices, specifically: (a) reciprocity - a mutual action or exchange in which both the practitioner and patient are equal partners in the healing process; (b) responsibility - the idea that, ultimately, people must heal themselves; (c) forgiveness - the notion that healing cannot progress if a person holds the burden of anger and pain; and (d) balance - the idea that it is possible to bring like and unlike things together in unity and harmony.

Narratives and healing: exploring one family's stories of cancer survivorship.

This study investigates the narratives of one couple who lived through life-changing events following a cancer diagnosis. The narratives of the cancer survivor and her husband are explored as they struggle to cope with their situation, provide support for one another, and consider their changing personal identities. This research addresses the communication dilemmas that often occur when family members, friends, and providers do not know how to respond to an individual diagnosed with cancer.