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Introduction Osteopathic medicine arose in the heartland of the United States as an alternative to many of the ineffective and dangerous medical practices of late ninteenth century. In the United States,osteopathy has subsequently gained full legal and professional recognition as a parallel and distinctive healing profession.The osteopathic approach has maintained its distinctive patient-oriented philosophy while combining it with the ever-expanding medical sciences.This high-tech,high-touch approach to patient care has made it the fastest growing arm of the health delivery system in many countries. The founder of osteopathic medicine was an American frontier physician named Andrew Taylor Still, M.D. He had practised “regular”medicine in the mid-western United States and served as a surgeon during the Civil War,but he concluded that disease-oriented medicine was ineffective. In 1874,he began practising a system emphasizing health rather than disease and developed an approach to improve the body’s own self-healing mechanism.His system of palpation of the musculoskeleton dysfunction and manipulation to return optimal function was the most obvious difference in his theraputic approach.Still selected the descriptor, “Osteopathy”-meaning,literally, “bone suffering”-to describe his distinctive new approach. The thousands of patient visits to osteopathic physicians are provided by practitioners in every peciality field,all of whom share the common unifying philosophy developed by A.T.Still. Osteopathic education emphasizes four basic osteopathic tenets,which are as follows: 1. The body is an integrated unit: The physical body is made up of a number of inter-related organs and systems,all working in unison towards maintaining health.Likewise,the mind,body and spritual being of each person are inseperable and interdependent.This belief in wholism is built into the osteopathic educational system to such an extent that in America all D.O.specialists are first trained to be generalists.The position of the American Osteopathic Association is, “Proper balance among the parts means health while improper balance can meen susceptibility to disease and illness”. 2. Structure and function are inter-related: Dysfunction in the musculoskeleton system frequently contributes to pain,poor blood flow,and even changes in the way in which organ system work,leading to constipation,headaches,fatigue and increased suceptibility to disease.Conversely,problems in different body functions will typically present neuromusculoskeletal system clues which the osteopathic physician has been trained to find.This additional knowledge leads to early diagnosis,often with fewer expensive tests.Understanding the inter-relationship between structure and function provides the osteopath with additional disgnostic and theraputic options.Osteopaths will frequently use OMT(Ostepathic Manipulative Treatment) as part of a treatment plan to improve structure-function relationships. 3. The body has self-healing,self-regulating mechanisms: Osteopaths respect the wisdom and experience of the body which is continiously treating and healing itself;fighting invading becteria,forming clots and eventually new skin over cuts,even seeking out and destroying cancer cells.An osteopath strives to protect and assist these natural processes. Thus, osteopathic treatment emphasizes preventive practices,such as nutrition and exercise,but it also includes careful decision-making about when and how to prescribe medication.Because the root world for “doctor” menas “teacher”,doctors of osteopathy also recognise the responsibility to teach the patient to make their own wise decisions to enhance self-healing. 4. Rational osteopathic treatment is based on applying the first three tenets: This is the most defining of the four osteopathic tenets.While the other three tenets are individually considered to be true statements by almost all healing professions,only the osteopathic profession has elected to,and has the means of,applying all three to the core of its educational and practice philosohy and therefore to the care of its patients. It works on the all the four ostepathic tenets of the neurologic and physiologic bases described below:
Philosophic emphasis on the whole patient parallels the osreopathic profession’s emphasis on primary health care.Regardless of whether a patient is suffering from a cold,pneumonia,diabetes or congestive heart failure; regardless of symptoms of headache,constipation,or low back pain; regardless of an impending birth or an impending surgery,the physician will apply the four tenets in caring for the person who is a patient. |