25 Years And Still Going Strong -NHS Alliance

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 18 Apr 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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The NHS Alliance extends its warm congratulations to the British Holistic Medicine Association which celebrates its 25th anniversary at its Silver Jubilee conference 18th and 19th April.

Its message today is as strong and as relevant as it was a quarter of a century ago. Patients are people, not machines. Technological medicine has produced remarkable successes in treating single episodes of acute illness, but too often fails to address the needs of those with long term and complex conditions, including people with disabilities and the elderly.

Dr Michael Dixon is NHS Alliance chairman and a GP who has long embraced the principles of holistic medicine. He said:

"We are at risk of over-emphasising technological medicine at the expense of caring and compassion. If our systems don't recognise patients as whole human beings, then what they deliver can all too easily become inhumane.

"That is what the British Holistic Medicine Association was set up to combat.

"We are proud to support them and encourage clinicians and NHS planners to listen to what they are saying."

Notes

1. The NHS Alliance is a collaboration of clinicians, managers and board members who put patients first. It is the independent body that represents NHS primary care. Values based, it is the only organisation that brings together PCTs with GP practices, clinicians with managers and Board members, and NHS primary care with its patients. The Alliance membership and its hard working national executive is fully multi-professional.

NHS Alliance