We don’t mean to do this. We have excellent intentions! But we need to care more about impact, rather than intention, and take responsibility for how we both help and harm our patients, unless we’re approaching them in a way that calms the nervous system and helps support them in lifestyle changes that will maintain self-regulation and co-regulation of the nervous system, in addition to other health-inducing behaviors and interventions.
For ten years now, the Whole Health Medicine Institute has been training doctors, midwives, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, therapists, and alternative health care providers to be bridges of healing that leverage the best of conventional medicine, cutting edge trauma healing psychotherapies, mind-body-spirit medicine, movement practices, the arts, nutrition, and other Whole Health interventions. We train health care providers and therapists on both sides of the healing divide to facilitate and serve patients, especially those conventional medicine doesn’t know how to help, with a trauma-informed focus that helps put healing the traumatized nervous system at the core of a patient-centered approach to healing.
We equip our students with the tools most of us did not learn during our training, which makes our graduates better equipped to either practice more satisfying and effective Whole Health medicine or to be better qualified for alternative career options, whether inside or outside the conventional health care system.
At the Whole Health Medicine Institute, we also recognize that health care providers, mental health workers, and CAM providers are burned out, traumatized, and in deep need of both personal healing and community connection with other like-minded doctors, nurses, therapists, and CAM providers on the front lines of health and healing. This is why we prioritize Healing the Healer before we ever dig into training you about what you might not have been taught in graduate school or your training program. You will be the patient first, so you can benefit from the tools we teach you to apply to patients, after you’ve put your own oxygen mask on first.