My medical school is hosting Reiki sessions for students....

[Perrotfish]

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I don't think the answer is so clear.

When considering Reiki and other CAM treatments I think there are 3 big problems:
1. Cost
2. Risk (both risk from the intervention and risk from delaying a treatment that has benefit)
3. Deception

Obviously if a doctor is telling a patient that energy healing will heal them or whatever then deception is involved. That being said there is some interesting research that suggests that patients can benefit from the placebo effect without deception. Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0015591) gave IBS patients a sugar pill in addition to their standard treatment, told them it was a sugar pill and explained it had "self-healing properties" and still observed a placebo effect. With that in mind, I think a doctor could successfully counsel a patient to engage Reiki as long as the 1) cost was not harming the patient, 2) there wasn't a risk of the patient delaying necessary intervention and for Reiki at least there is little inherent risk(certainly not true for all CAM) and 3) the physician was clear about the medical evidence for Reiki.

I still have a problem with my school advertising the practice as energy healing. It is deceptive. Furthermore the claims made by the practitioners they invited were deceptive. They claim that "realigning your energy" they were going to reduce your stress, etc. That is bull**** and they are certainly making money off the claim that they are "realigning" peoples energy.

Stop thinking yourself into knots over this. You don't need to spend your life hunting for the magical patient that meets your three criteria. When someone asks you to refer your patients to a low rent magic show, its OK just to say no.

Its amazing what you can accomplish if you can look confident. So many people spend their lives being unsure about absolutely everything that they're willing to follow the lead of anyone who seems to know what they're doing. They'll follow Donald Trump, just because he has such a convincing belief in Donald Trump. And that's why your patients need you to believe in science. Not just to know about it, but to believe in it. To let an absolutely untainted belief in evidence based medicine shine out during each and every appointment. To show them a force of that conviction so strong that it makes them believe too.

That's what's going to protect your patients from lesions of charlatans looking to rob them. That's when they'll let you heal them.

 

[Mace1370]

Stop thinking yourself into knots over this. You don't need to spend your life hunting for the magical patient that meets your three criteria. When someone asks you to refer your patients to a low rent magic show, its OK just to say no.

Its amazing what you can accomplish if you can look confident. So many people spend their lives being unsure about absolutely everything that they're willing to follow the lead of anyone who seems to know what they're doing. They'll follow Donald Trump, just because he has such a convincing belief in Donald Trump. And that's why your patients need you to believe in science. Not just to know about it, but to believe in it. To let an absolutely untainted belief in evidence based medicine shine out during each and every appointment. To show them a force of that conviction so strong that it makes them believe too.

That's what's going to protect your patients from lesions of charlatans looking to rob them. That's when they'll let you heal them.

I'm with Perrotfish on this. Don't feel like you need to bend over backwards to accommodate thieves and scam artists. You are doing your patients a disservice if you don't make your position known that there is no science behind any of this.

 

[babolat91]

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Just cause you don't understand it don't mean it's quack

1) I don't understand the relevance of this post. What does James Winch on 'Emotional Hygiene' have to do with quack CAM modalities?

2) Alt-health quackery is decided as such due to evidence of inefficacy (or a lack of evidence suggesting efficacy), not because people 'don't understand' it.

I'm struggling to understand the point you are trying to make.