Educational initiatives in integrative medicine: The imperative for change

As the public's use of complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapies has increased, and as research into the safety and efficacy of these modalities has intensified, medical schools are faced with the challenge of determining how best to integrate this information into the curriculum. Over the past decade, there has been increased interest and activity at many medical schools to incorporate complementary, alternative and integrative medicine (CAM) into the 4-year-undergraduate medical curriculum, as well as to graduate medical education programs. Beginning in 2000, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) at the National Institutes of Health in the US funded 15 institutions for multi-year grants (R25 awards) to foster these types of educational initiatives. The efforts of this group have been documented in a series of articles published in Academic Medicine and other key journals. Another important development has been the formation in 2002 of the Consortium of Academic Health Centers for Integrative Medicine, a group of now 43 medical schools in North America dedicated to helping transform healthcare through rigorous scientific studies, new models of clinical care, and innovative educational programs that integrate biomedicine with the rich diversity of various therapeutic systems and modalities. The Consortium published a suggested list of core competencies in integrative medicine that all graduates of medical school should possess (Acad. Med. 79:521–531, 2004), and also compiled a series of modules for teaching elements of Integrative Medicine. In Canada, efforts are underway, through the CAM in UME (Undergraduate Medical Education) Project, to broaden the awareness of CAM practices, products and perspectives in an evidence-based manner across the various curricula. In this plenary presentation, Dr. Haramati will outline the imperative for moving medical education in this direction. A variety of approaches will be highlighted in which material from the thematic thread of Complementary and Integrative Medicine, that is the blending of conventional and non-conventional therapies, can be used to advance both scientific curricular objectives and also to help students attain proficiency in competencies related to professionalism, such as self-awareness, self-care and personal growth.

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