The Promotional of Osteopathy in the UK

 

 

Right, well I’m back.

 

A patient asked me the other day (this is one who came to me for lower back ache and now I have treated his tennis elbow and his migraines)

 

Why is osteopathy not widely known in the UK for its approach to health, I could have saved myself a lot of time and drugs, if I had known!…………….

 

Well, in my opinion (and remember that’s all it is) there are a few fundamentals with answering a question of this magnitude.

 

-          The fact that osteopathy has always been in the private health care sector. (apart from a few NHS contracts). This effectively limits the market. Personally regarding the NHS, if osteopathy was apart of it, we may lose our identity altogether. Trying to fit a natural health care system into a “pharmaceutical prescribing system” – seems to me like fitting a round peg into a square hole.

 

-          The lack of focus from the profession. Osteopaths are renown for their different interests and opinions (this makes osteopathy what it is by-the-way!) which does mean there has been constant “in-house” discussions for years from the difference camps (cranial, structural). If only the energy had been focused on promoting the profession.

 

-          The lack of definition of osteopathy and an osteopath. This has be a concern for sometime, however, the more I delve into this discussion the more unimportant this becomes. The public are really not interested in what an osteopath is, but more how they can help them and this is where the focus on promotion should be.

 

-          No focused promotional drive. I’ve really got to be careful what I say here, as I believe the associations have made great achievements in shaping the profession. However, I feel the networking with other professions and promotion has been a bit of a struggle. I realise that the above points don’t help this is but the profession requires proactive stance not a reactive one.

 

-          The lack of proactive practitioners. Many osteopaths once qualified, focus purely on building their own practice and quite frankly I don’t blame them as it’s damn hard work. However, if we there were more practitioners who were passionate about the profession as a whole then I’m sure there would have been further developments on the promotional front.

 

…………Well after that rant and 1 hour later I finally let the patient go……..he hasn’t asked me a question since.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Osteopaths Guide is Launched!

Hi

As an osteopath, I have been frustrated with the lack of understanding of what we do and what we can offer the public. With the help of the NHS and quite honestly some “confused” marketing by the osteopathic community – we, as a profession have been lumbered (no pun intended) with the title – Back Pain Specialists.

Now, when Osteopathy was conceived back in 1874 by an American Doctor Andrew Taylor Still – is wasn’t because he was trying to cure lower back pain. He recognised the importance of the musculo-system in health and well being. As a result, he developed various techniques to improve the mechanical efficiency of the body to have an impact on all aspects of health. A. T. Still developed various principles and ideas and I’m not going to list them all today – but as a taster:

1) The Interrelation of Structure and Function- Bit of a mouthful, but essentially means that if the structure is compromised then it will have an impact on the function and visa-versa, if the function is reduced then this is often expressed through it’s structure. Common sense really and this principle can be applied to most things in life!

2) The body as a unit – This is where the holistic aspect comes in, the body works as a “complete machine” he recognised years ago that to look at health problems in isolation made no sense at all – each part of the body effect the others, all parts work in synergy. Eastern medicine recognised this centuries ago, however, the western methods of medicine seem to have rejected this fundamental understanding.

Right, well that’s enough of those for now, the main point of mentioning them was to highlight that Osteopathy is about treating the body via the musculo-skeletal system not just treating the musculo-skeletal itself. Unfortunately, for Osteopathy to become a state registered profession it has lost some of its principles along the way to fit into the mainstream medical model. Osteopaths promote health via the musculo-skeletal system, we do not treat symptoms, if we did then we would end up chasing symptoms round the body (we’ll leave that to the NHS thank you)…

It is about time osteopaths themselves starting promoting the profession – this is where the Osteopaths Guide comes in. It is an ideal platform for osteopaths to promote themselves and as a collective promote a better understanding of Osteopathy. Check out the website www.osteopathsguide.com

I’ll be back soon……