The children's clinic for integrative medicine in Amsterdam

The outpatient integrative pediatric clinic was set up in 2007 with the goal to provide access to the best practices available in complementary and natural therapies in conjunction with conventional medicine in a culturally competent manner. The Slotervaart Hospital is the national leader in offering integrative medicine advice and treatment options in the Netherlands. The pediatric Integrative Medicine clinic offers a variety of treatment and consultative services to children and their families (holistic assessment and personalized information/resource consultation). Specific individual or multimodality treatment approaches at the Integrative medicine clinic include academic therapy, aroma diffusion therapy, integrative cancer care service, massage therapy, lifestyle management, mind–body skills, psychotherapy, relaxation and mental imagery and self regulation skills training. Next to the internal services an interprofessional collaboration with CAM health care practitioners was established in an integrative health care model. To ensure coordinated care CAM practitioners are selected by a set of specific criteria focusing on education and training, experience with children, shared medical records and licensing. Most external referrals are to naturopathic doctors, homeopathic doctors, chiropractors and acupuncturists. A preferred list based on the medical needs of the patient population for adjunctive treatment services was built. Patient referrals are either from primary care practitioners (family doctors) or from pediatric subspecialists in academic hospitals, asking for advice about CAM treatment in children with chronic illnesses.

As there is an increasing amount of journal articles, books, websites and information databases on CAM therapies, a close co-operation with the librarian in the Slotervaart Hospital was established as a stepping stone in the ensurance of Evidence Based Medicine for the medical doctors running the Integrative Medicine Clinic. Momentarily the clinic creates a website for parents and children for information purposes on integrative medicine and a forum to share the CAM experiences of the children. A survey is being conducted among the patients attending the Integrative Medicine Clinic with data presentation on the 5th International Congress on complementary Medicine Research (Norway. ICCMR 2010) held in Tromsø, Norway.