Alternative Medicine

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  What is alternative medicine? What role does it play in the delivery of health care?  Explain how alternative medicine may be more beneficial than traditional medicine.

According to the text, alternative medicine “refers to the broad domain of health care resources that are not intrinsic to biomedicine” who’s goal is to prevent or treat disease (Shi 2010). Some examples of alternative medicine and therapies are homeopathy, herbal remedies, natural products, acupuncture, meditation, yoga exercises, biofeedback, and spiritual guidance or prayer. Because alternative medicine is so different to traditional medicine practices it is not endorsed by Western medical practices. Alternative medicine is an outpatient care service. Ambulatory care, or outpatient care, is comprised of “diagnostic and therapeutic services and treatment for the walking patient” or “any health care services that do not require an overnight stay in a health care institution” (Shi 2010). According to the NCBI, the efficacy of this approach is valid for some treatments, based on very weak results, while others are essentially useless (Debas 1970). Alternative medicine has the potential to be considered more beneficial than traditional medicine for a number of reasons. These treatments have the ability to be better customized to the patients desires as well as their personal beliefs, including religious beliefs. Another huge benefit of alternative medicine is that it is considered outpatient health care which, in theory, means that medical treatments won’t be extreme enough that the patient would need to remain in any form of overnight facility.