The phrase alternative health care is often interpreted in the context of the modality used by the CAM practitioner. For example, instead of pharmaceuticals, a patient might choose the alternative of supplementation.
While that’s technically true, there’s great value in expanding your concept of alternative to include the way you offer your services, and present your business to your clients. Consider your business as an alternative to not just the treatment offered by the allopathic medical community, but to the level of service.
If patients are frustrated by the limited time that their family physician has to offer them, for example, then focus on offering your clients more of that. If patients are having trouble understanding what an MD is telling them, then become recognized for your ability to explain things in ways that are easy to grasp.
While the default mindset may be that “alternative” refers to the modalities used by CAM practitioners, expanding your concept of the term to include your place in the health care market can help you find your business niche.
Remember that you’re not just offering an alternative to how to treat an illness. You’re offering an alternative to how to treat people.
Next: Putting the “Complementary” in CAM
Oh my God, thank you! Finally, a down to earth practical approach to the word “alternative” that’s actually USEFUL to patients.
Yes, make it work for you, make it work for them. Start by asking WHY it’s so “alternative”. For start, you may spend time with the patient where an MD may not; you may prescribe a treatment that at worst does nothing and at best does just what an MD would do- with no risk of side effects; you may have a warm setting where an MD might only have cold sterility.
These are all good examples of how we can make the word “alternative” work for all of us, especially the patient.
Alas, just as often, what alternative means to many would-be patients is “kinda weird”, foreign, new agey and in many cases “quacks”.
This isn’t especially surprising because most people have grown up believing in the western system. What is often very disheartening is that I see many, MANY colleagues embracing the aspect of alternative for themselves and ONLY themselves.
What do I mean? Many flock to alternative medicine, for better or worse, not because they see it so much as an excellent healing modality, but because it IS ALTERNATIVE. And so you will have the funky artist, the poly monogomous swinger, the burning man crowd, skatboarding rastafarian hippy musician, the person with tatoos all over their body, the one who comes from a commune but will live in an Ashram after graduating…
Need I go on?
Is there anything wrong with any of this? NO!!!!!! Your life is your life, thank GOD it’s your life. And we get it: you are funky, you are alternative, you are ever so hip…your parents would be ASTOUNDED to see you didn’t become a minister at the church and instead decided to become a lesbian and experiment with girls while studying “the devils” acupuncture. Power to you for you and your own life.
But here’s the reality of this kind of alternative: NO ONE CARES!!!
That is correct. Joe-Knee-Problem does not care about your art, your lifestyle or your commune. Not until you can demonstrate to him you can solve his knee problem. How is he going to know that if you spend your time flaunting your personal life in a profession that is all about helping people? He is not.
Some may think this is being harsh. That depends. If you’re seriously into putting the best foot forward in alternative medicine, if you’re really about the patient (not you), if you really understand this, then I’m probably not being harsh enough.
In business (heck, in volunteering, in LIFE) no one cares about you. They care about you only after you can show what can be done for them. Maybe in the world at large that sounds a little cold. But in our profession? It’s just as well.
No one cares about you, because you’re in the business of caring for them. And so, while we may be stuck at the moment with the term “alternative”, let’s make it work for us. YES, alternative to side effects, YES, alternative to overpriced wasteful medicine, YES to warmth, care and compassion. Why? Because that’s about them, not you.