Medications alone don’t always relieve pain or anxiety in patients. Complementary or holistic therapies improve outcomes by helping to alleviate pain, decrease stress, anxiety and more! The patient’s feel “cared for” when someone gives them undivided attention even if it is just for 5 minutes. California’s healthcare facilities are not very progressive when it comes to integrating holistic therapies (also referred to as integrative medicine). The mid-west and east coast have several successful programs in place. A large health care system in MN and WIS has an integrative medicine team and offers 5 different therapies to patients in the hospital plus a network of outpatient clinics. Therapies offered to hospitalized patients are acupuncture, acupressure, healing touch, aromatherapy and music therapy. The hospitals are seeing a cost savings because patients use less pain medication, sometimes go home sooner and are happier with their care and experience. Allina health care system states they save $2000 per patient since implementing integrative medicine. Here the hospitals have very little and most are volunteer programs.
What are California facilities waiting for? Why are many physicians so resistant? Perhaps they think they will be considered to woo-woo or unprofessional if they endorse holistic therapies. I don’t have the answers to these questions but I do know there is mounting evidence that the therapies are effective even if we cannot completely explain how they work. The therapies that I use – healing touch, aromatherapy and guided imagery – actually fall under the scope of care for nurses as long as they have the proper training. When I worked in the ER and started using healing touch (a form of energy medicine) on staff and patients the MDs were skeptical to say the least. Once they saw the positive results they started to ask me for treatments on their headaches and to help calm patients down. These therapies do not replace medications; patients do not have to choose between them. They work together to help patients feel better faster and for a longer period of time. Hence the term integrative medicine.
One study entitled, The Effectiveness of nurse-delivered aromatherapy in an acute care setting, by Jill R. Johnson et al, had over 10,000 documented aromatherapy sessions. The study concluded that inhaling the appropriate essential oil generally resulted in significant improvements in pain, anxiety and nausea in patients. Other smaller studies have demonstrated oils diffused in nursing stations help boost staff morale, efficiency and accuracy. This is what administration wants in facilities: improved patient care and satisfaction plus staff efficiency and satisfaction.
Numerous quantitative and qualitative research studies support the use of healing touch for pain management, improved sleep, management of side effects from chemotherapy and more!
There is some financial outlay in the beginning; setting up a program, training staff etc. but it is returned within a reasonable amount of time. What is California waiting for? If you are a health care professional or caregiver and want to learn more I teach classes in aromatherapy and healing touch. If you are a health care facility I can guide you in implementing holistic therapies and programs. Contact me with questions or for more information.
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Laurie Ratto, RN, Speaker, HTCP, CCA has 30+ years’ experience helping people to heal from physical, mental , and emotional pain. She provides 1:1 services and various classes to assist caregivers and health care providers in helping others and themselves. Laurie Ratto specializes in integrative medicine, as a holistic healer, she keeps her RN certification current because she understands the power of balance as we heal.