Integrated medicine is the way forward, combining the best of orthodox and complementary treatment, according to the chairwoman of a national working group reviewing regulation of complementary therapists.
"Patients should have the best of conventional medicines, diagnoses and treatment and all the wisdom of complementary therapies with a professional approach," said Teri Garvey yesterday.
She was speaking in advance of a lecture in Dublin tomorrow by Dr David Reilly on how complementary therapies are used alongside conventional medicine at the Glasgow Homoeopathic Hospital in Scotland.
Ms Garvey confirmed the working group on the regulation of complementary therapists is to report to the Minister for Health, Mary Harney in the autumn. The working group, which was formed in May 2003, will suggest ways in which the public can be better protected from unscrupulous or poorly trained complementary therapists.
"There are three main areas which we are working on - education and training of therapists, professional associations of therapists and the need for a public information campaign on complementary therapists," Ms Garvey said.
On education and training issues, good progress has been made to date, she added. "Courses have varied unacceptably from correspondence courses to courses at degree level and we are now developing a system through which courses can be evaluated and accredited by the Higher and Further Education Training Awards Council, Ms Garvey said.
"We also need professionalisation of the sector with organisations of therapists who follow codes of ethics, have grievance and disciplinary procedures so that members who don't comply can be taken off their registers," she added. Currently, acupuncturists, homeopaths and medical herbalists all have professional registers of practitioners but the problem lies in the fact that often there is more than one register and it is difficult for the public to know which register is the most reliable.
"The thrust in regulation is to encourage therapists to form a strong federation of different associations or societies within each therapy group.
"The public needs to know who's properly qualified," Ms Garvey said. To date, there is a Yoga Federation of Ireland and various associations of acupuncture and herbal medicine are working towards creating federations in each of their disciplines.
Commenting on whether complementary therapists should have statutory regulation, she said: "The international trend is away from statutory regulation and towards voluntary self-regulation with each therapy represented by one strong regulatory body or federation.
"Statutory regulation won't stop people going to spiritual healers or others who don't have any qualifications whatsoever. The public also has to take responsibility for their own health and ask questions such as is the therapist trained, qualified, registered and insured to practise whether they are attending a conventional or complementary medicine practitioner. It's not just in the complementary health sector that things go wrong."
