Contemporary osteopaths could describe osteopathic healthcare as a complete and distinctive primary care model, for treating illness, centred on palpatory evaluation of the whole person. It is dedicated to optimising health for the individual and potentially for whole communities. It is based on the recognition of the components involved in the reciprocity of structure and function. It emphasizes the role of homeostasis in the restoration of health. Osteopathy recognises the contribution of genetic and environmental factors and the influence of lifestyle in maintaining health or in the causation of disease.
Today, much of osteopathy’s specialised body of knowledge is borrowed or shared with other professions especially biomedical. It may be unique in the way osteopaths apply it.
a) osteopathy is based on palpation which has been refined over the last one and a half centuries. No other system except possibly chiropractic possesses this feature.
b) it is based on a way of looking at health and illness which, while possessing some of biomedicine’s models, is unique in that it is three dimensional. It studies the evolution of health, illness and disease utilising precipitating, predisposing and aggravating factors, using reductionism but from a holistic perspective.
c) osteopathy is unique in recognising a reciprocal relationship between structure and function. Osteopaths, whether they graduate with the knowledge or are even aware of it, contrive and attribute meanings to these terms that are unique to osteopathy. Much of osteopathic practice is from a musculo-skeletal perspective and what is often termed the treatment part is very much a continuum of the case history and the examination.
d) from a musculo-skeletal perspective, it is truly patient centred (which comes straight from alternative medicine) in that it is the patient’s tissues that inform the osteopath in what to do. Osteopaths often say that they have to put their hands on the patient to discover what is happening. It is patient empowering in that they can become aware that they do not have to suffer pain and that there are other ways to regard their health status.
e) it is ecological in recognising the patient’s environment, and what this may contribute to the way the patient demonstrates his ease or dis-ease. The modern osteopath recognises psycho-social factors and how these may influence a positive treatment outcome.
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a) osteopathy is based on palpation which has been refined over the last one and a half centuries. No other system except possibly chiropractic possesses this feature.
b) it is based on a way of looking at health and illness which, while possessing some of biomedicine’s models, is unique in that it is three dimensional. It studies the evolution of health, illness and disease utilising precipitating, predisposing and aggravating factors, using reductionism but from a holistic perspective.
c) osteopathy is unique in recognising a reciprocal relationship between structure and function. Osteopaths, whether they graduate with the knowledge or are even aware of it, contrive and attribute meanings to these terms that are unique to osteopathy. Much of osteopathic practice is from a musculo-skeletal perspective and what is often termed the treatment part is very much a continuum of the case history and the examination.
d) from a musculo-skeletal perspective, it is truly patient centred (which comes straight from alternative medicine) in that it is the patient’s tissues that inform the osteopath in what to do. Osteopaths often say that they have to put their hands on the patient to discover what is happening. It is patient empowering in that they can become aware that they do not have to suffer pain and that there are other ways to regard their health status.
e) it is ecological in recognising the patient’s environment, and what this may contribute to the way the patient demonstrates his ease or dis-ease. The modern osteopath recognises psycho-social factors and how these may influence a positive treatment outcome.