Hi,
I am also interested in alt medicine modalities. I have used alt med for my own care and as an MD I plan on recommending some alt treatments to patients.
True, Georgetown got a big grant from the NIH to teach info on CAM in their regular classes. So, they are the "best".
I visited recently and here is the down side.
* the attitude was that they teach CAM "since your patients will use it and you should know what they are doing"
* a resident I spoke with said there is zero talk/use of CAM methods by the clinicians she works with and clinical care there does not offer many CAM options. One MD I interviewed with said he somewhat recently began sometimes-recommending chiropractic care but that he was taught the mantra that chiropractors were a hoax and could paralyze you.
* The Masters is in studying CAM methods using Western science methods to validate them. My opinion is that why study how to test CAM? Why not spend a year learning a method, like acupuncture, then you can practice and study it your whole career. This is so new a program; I'd want to check if anyone has graduated with a degree yet.
A good school for CAM is UCSF. Good luck getting in, but if you do the environment is very pro-CAM. The clinicians publicly use, speak about, and recommend alt med. There is an alt med center (Osher center) that offers classes to patients and clinicians. Many of the patients have already tried CAM and can feel open to speak about it to the doctors.
Anywhere in California is probably more CAM friendly that the East Coast. A Georgetown MD told me that a California school will have more integrated CAM friendly care than Georgetown in that patients and doctors will much more commonly use alt methods.
I have searched for info on CAM and medical schools a couple ways. I recommend visiting the NIH CAM website. They list all the grants given to medical schools and hospital to use/study CAM. Harvard, Duke and MANY other schools also have grants for CAM. Georgetown just advertises more about it. Id say that Harvard has an at least equally good program and I am sure many others.
I also visit the hospital associated with the schools website. I do a search for yoga, acupuncture, complementary medicine and so on. If I find a couple of doctors or classes listed I take that as a good sign.
Good luck
