Dr. Gallagher has a new vision for modern healthcare: complete interaction between the patient and all the patient’s healthcare providers. This new vision should lead to a healthcare system focused on overall wellness for the patient, rather than the current program focused on the alleviation of symptoms. She believes that healthcare professionals should communicate with each other to develop a plan to promote overall healing of the patient. This idea of interaction among healthcare professionals is an idea that some claim already exists, but in reality most doctors feel they are too busy to engage in real dialogue with other healthcare providers regarding one particular patient.
Medical doctors do not often interact with the patient’s dentist, psychologist, or pharmacist, and this lack of interaction allows for focus on the symptoms of sickness and opens the door for potential drug interactions or other health crises. Each patient is important, the most important thing in their life and each and every patient should be treated as such. Patients do not want to make multiple trips to multiple doctors and Dr. Gallagher believes that if the health professionals treating the patient would take the extra time to speak with the other professionals treating the patient, then all the providers would have less occurrences of the same patient with the same health problems and the overall health of the patients in their care would improve.
Watch!! This year, 2012, will be a year of endings and beginnings!
This coming year will be a banner year for healthcare. Are you ready? No, there will be no saving anyone from the wrath of healthcare reform. There will be some who believe it is the place to be and others who know it is not for the greater good. We are not here to attack the possible plan for healthcare, rather to bring to light, stories of how people are surviving without all the bells and whistles that are an illusion of guarantees given by “plans” of insurance.
Question: does the child of less than ten years who dies of cancer have a full life as compared to a man of seventy who is on his fourth stent?
Might we say one is at peace and one is at fear? Or, is it rather their path and they are recording video for others to learn by? No one can say for sure what the plan or the path is, nor if we feel it is a place of accomplishment or a passage of time with no beginning or end. And so, the “Healthcare Dogma” is the rule, the bible, the true and tested scientific reasoning with verified results, the ONLY word on the subject, and the path we are squeezed into to heal. Really? Is that so for you?
I have had my challenges in the past several decades and the path has had boulders. When they were moved, snakes of all kinds engulfed my entire being, I was trapped. What do you do then? I stopped, looked at the situation, listened to all views and thought about what I could bring to the path I was on. It was a challenge and it is never ending. As we go through the next several months, the powers to be that rule based on a single step ladder will be hammering the rudders to be sure they make it through the storm. Others, the people who are trying to sheer the edges of the picture, will bring the decoupage to the party and look to paste their part in the bigger plan. This will not be pretty. What happens when no one can agree on the cake and frosting? You get a pan of watery, stinking paste that will not cook or be edible.
So, how do you take what you have and make a plan?
Plan for yourself. Learn what you can. Speak up for yourself, be it wrong or right. Pull your hair back and perk those ears up, listen to what is going on. Then, make a choice. Remember, however, choices are just that, choices. They are not a mountain that has to be scaled. They can be changed and they are fluid. For this year of changing landscape, dodge the mountains and ride the creeks and rivers. Pick the flowers of love and support given by your families in your times of need. Share with others what you do know, break that bread at the meal, yes, it does reproduce. Throw the bag of seeds into the air and see what grows. Share is a requirement of this year, learn how. See you in the conversation of life, healing as you go along.
How can this interaction be achieved?
Currently, medical professionals have been educated and instructed to work with a certain disease, a certain part of the body or specific symptoms that are presenting in the patient. In this process, there is no communication between the professionals and this lack of interaction means there is no overall focus on healing the patient. Integrative and holistic educators are working to increase patient responsibility for their own healthcare and are encouraging this very important interaction to lead to healing. A huge shift in training of healthcare professionals is necessary to achieve this change in viewpoint of healthcare professionals, since the current, ineffectual system has been in place since the early 1900’s.
What are the challenges of this change in viewpoint?
Even if a physician wishes to believe a different theory of disease or treatment and the physician is a member of national and state society along with licensing boards, the physician cannot voice this alternate idea or theory. The fact is, a new theory will be challenged and the parties that would benefit most from the antiquated system are the parties voicing objection to the new change. Therefore, the ensuing uproar against a change will take no hostages in its attempts to knock down the new theory being presented. This ‘take no prisoners’ attitude of the establishment applies to everyone associated with the potential change.
What is the theory of past healthcare that can begin to change?
A patient, in some instances, is a person who is in need of help, in need of some one to take care of them, of using someone with greater knowledge and expertise and in even bigger circumstances, a person who is a life saver, to help them. The personal responsibility of the individual for their health, the care they receive and the support they need, are the most fundamental and important things to be changed. In many visions of healthcare, this will take a changing of the guard with shifting responsibilities.
How can this change be brought about?
By an increased awareness that healthcare is not finite and not perfect as documented in books. An increased awareness will evolve consistently with technology, increased knowledge and increased communication between all levels of patient care.
Who will institute the biggest change in healthcare?
The belief that is being challenged maintains a collection of politicians and medical institutions as the directors of the patient’s healthcare.
Is there a better concept of healthcare?
Yes. We are the directors of our life and health, so perhaps it would be time to start learning what we can do for ourselves, rather than be told what we deserve, what we are allowed to have and what condition we should be in.
Why is this so important?
Each individual has been put into the classification of health according to the physical disease and symptoms they present with. Treatments are distributed based on these parameters. So, if there are thousands of symptoms and diseases, are their only thousands of people in the world? No, so it is time for the individual to stand up and be counted. One treatment that works for others may or may not work for you. It is great for some to be saved by drugs or surgical procedures, but these same drugs or procedures may be devastating to others. How the patient determines the best course of therapy is trial and error, with a close attention paid to medical history. A treatment will be used until it harms a certain percentage of the population, and only then will an evaluation of its efficacy determine its future. So, why are we allowing ourselves to be experiments?
The Rose Project, LLC., is a new concept put forth by Dr. Jeanette Gallagher, a project developed to increase education, responsibility and personal nurturing to increase the health of the individual from one minute to the next. It is a work in progress.
Dr. Gallagher is also writing a book describing the details of the project, with a tentative release date of 2012. In the meantime, Dr. Gallagher will utilize her blog to communicate the barriers and challenges patients are currently experiencing in accessing education and support to increase their health. Check all Dr. Gallagher’s other websites (check the right hand column for all the links) for further information not given here.
