ihp

i was thinking: in special education, there is a document called an iep (individualized education program) that summarizes the strengths and needs of individual students, and outlines plans to address those needs... and i thought: we should have an ihp, an individualized health program! i was thinking about this primarily as an organizational tool for diagnosis and treatment with "alternative therapies." for myself, i find myself "wrestling" internally with issues of how best to treat my patient's problems. health problems, you see, are multi-faceted. simplistically, we could say that patients suffer from: structural issues, physiological imbalances, psychological knots, etc. and although it is convenient to "box" the problems into separate categories, it's very true that in many cases, things are interrelated. example: the structural issue (severe back pain) could cause depression. or, the strained pec minor/scalenes could lead to chronic hypoxia (because of shallow chest breathing) resulting in some physiological impairments. (notice the bias towards structure!)

in sped, there are situations where a child has multiple disabilities. commonly, children with learning disabilities also suffer from "adhd" or "ebd." and there may be ways to address each type of disability individually. but it would be more efficient to take everything into consideration, and consciously create a plan that will help the child with the least effort (both for teacher and for student): "kill two or more birds with one stone."

i was thinking, again, about this model with respect to treatments. if we clarify all deficiencies/needs of all considered aspects (at least within any given practitioner's scope of practice), then we may formulate more efficient, streamlined treatments without always feeling "well, there's something i could've done better" or "maybe i could've looked at it this way." and maybe the answer would be "less efficient" in the sense of trying to address all aspects of the problem at once; but at least with awareness of all of those aspects, the practitioner won't feel like s/he is "neglecting" the patient in any way.

...

i also thought of the sped concept of response to intervention with regards to treatment. response to intervention or rti is an alternative way to "assess and address" children with learning disabilities. in the past, learning disabilities could only be "discovered" when there was a significant discrepancy between a child's expected and actual performance. for example, by iq tests, the child would be normal, but the math performance would be very subpar. the problem with the discrepancy model was that it often took 3 years on average for the discrepancy to even show up; and by that time, it would be much harder to "catch up" and correct the problem.

rti is basically the idea that full accommodations (or at least full to a reasonable extent) are placed into the general curriculum from the start. this way, you eliminate some minor ld issues from the start, simply because their needs are met by the "accommodating" curriculum. if students have problems even with these basic supports, then you would see it immediately; you wouldn't have to wait 3 or so years. thus, no time lag.

with regards to acupuncture/herbalism: maybe there are fundamental "patterns" that we could treat ALL patients with, in order to rule out their influence in "rarer" and less likely patterns... well, maybe not. there is something to be said for a purely "individualized" treatment that meets what is discerned of an imbalance precisely... but i guess in very complex cases, it would be a more systematic approach... oh well.