The 12 Health Care Principles

The following 12 principles lie at the heart of the new paradigm of health care that is emerging in the 21st century.

1  Holistic physicians embrace a variety of safe, effective diagnostic and treatment options.  These include education for lifestyle changes and self-care, complementary diagnostic and treatment approaches and conventional drugs and surgery.

2  Searching for the underlying causes of disease is preferable to treating symptoms alone.

3  Holistic physicians expand as much effort in establishing what kind of patient has a disease as they do in establishing what kind of disease a patient has.

4  Prevention is preferable to treatment and is usually more  cost effective.   The most cost effective approach evokes the patient s own innate healing capacities. 

5  Illness is viewed as a manifestation of a dysfunction of the whole person, not as an isolated event.

6  A major determining factor in the healing process is the quality of the relationship established between physician and patient, in which the patient is encouraged to take responsibility for his or her health.

7 The ideal physician patient relationship considers the needs, desires, awareness and insight of the patient as well as of the physician.

8  Physicians significantly influence patients by their example.

9  Illness, pain and the dying process can be learning opportunities for both patients and physicians.

10  Holistic, physicians encourage their patients to evoke the healing power of love, hope, humour and enthusiasm and to release the toxic consequences of hostility, sham, greed, depression and prolonged fear, anger and grief.

11  Unconditional love is life s most powerful medicine.  Holistic physicians strive to adopt an attitude of unconditional love for patients.

12  Optimal health is much more than the absence of sickness. It is the conscious pursuit of the highest qualities of the physical, environmental, mental, emotional, spiritual and social aspects of human experience.