This is a serious question that goes to the heart of our current crisis in the NHS. Most Doctors are trained as pathologists and have very little training in health promotion or natural health therapy. The very word “Doctor” used to mean “Teacher” in the days when physicians had to make do with the few simple remedies at hand and then do their best to understand why their patients were sick and try to motivate them to help themselves as much as possible with good advice.
A Serious Question for the NHS
This is a serious question that goes to the heart of our current crisis in the NHS. Most Doctors are trained as pathologists and have very little training in health promotion or natural health therapy. The very word “Doctor” used to mean “Teacher” in the days when physicians had to make do with the few simple remedies at hand and then do their best to understand why their patients were sick and try to motivate them to help themselves as much as possible with good advice. It was in the interest of both doctor and patient to learn how to stay well, as in earlier times even a minor ailment could well prove fatal.
The Foundations of a Sick Society
We have laid the foundations for an ever increasingly sick society, with the rise of the drug industry driven by profits and increased sales, the ever-increasing focus on pathology in our medical training and practice and the willingness of the public to be passive recipients of whatever treatment is given them, not realizing that they are the prime movers responsible for their own health or sickness.
The promises of a golden future for us all, of eliminating all the killer diseases known to man, has turned out to be a lie.
I don’t believe the blame can be placed at any one group’s door but we have all participated in this process either through ignorance, blind belief in this promised future golden age or by design where there appeared to be more money to be made from the sick than the healthy.
The Way Forward
I believe without a radical change to the way we provide our health care and a massive public education programme to teach personal responsibility for our own health, the current system of medical care will be overwhelmed and unable to provide essential services.
This was indeed the essence of a presentation by the Kings Fund at the International Health Workers Conference in Brighton in 2004 that I attended. Unfortunately little has changed in the past decade and the government still feels obliged to pour more resources into our NHS with ever diminishing returns in the way of improved health to society.
Very simply put, more medical care will never lead to a healthier society but to a society increasingly dependent on medicine for survival and a passive population unwilling to take personal responsibility for their own health or ignorant as to how they could do this.
Can the general population be blamed when little support or guidance has been given by the medical profession that is ill-prepared for this task, being expert in pathology and disease management but untrained in ethology and health promotion? They too, therefore, cannot be blamed. This is a problem we have all brought on ourselves collectively and individually.
The way forward may be difficult but self-evident; a shift in focus from pathology to ethology, from disease management to health promotion.
TotalHealthMatters! is among the thousands of similar natural health centres in the UK, that have contributed to this change for the millions of patients who have sought the help from us that has been wanting in our NHS.
When will our leaders recognize the vital need for this in the NHS and provide such a service free or even at a small fee? This would benefit all those who cannot afford private services and also take pressure off the overburdened NHS as well. The beginnings of a real health service.
Visit our Health Promotion Hub Site [HERE][1] and help yourself to health, take the pressure off the NHS!
[1]: http://www.totalhealthmatters.co.uk