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| Alternative and Conventional Medicine Risks | To give a reasonable response to the real risks of treatment by conventional health care providers means to take greater responsibility for one's treatment. A selective patient cannot have blind faith in his or her doctor, no matter how magiclike the doctor may seem or try to present himself. We have to become more knowledgeable about the drugs which are prescribed to us. We have to take more active part in our own treatment, which means we have to ask lots of questions and assume nothing. We can't think that the drug the nurse wants us to swallow is the only drug our physician has prescribed. You must ask what this pill is. You should know whether it’s essential to take it or not. We need to look for a second and third opinion, which doesn't mean search for another doctor who will tell you what you want to hear. It means do research and gather the information. Read about your disease and the prescribed treatment for it. We can never eliminate risk altogether when we must depend on human beings, fallible and imperfect as we are. But we can reduce our risk by being more responsible for our health care and being less passive. Nevertheless, some faith in the competence and professionalism of our health care providers is necessary, but it need not be blind faith. You may need a surgery to have a limb removed, but you may need to make sure that the surgeon ready to operate doesn't think he's supposed to remove your gall bladder.
Maybe, the most popular reason why alternative methods of treatment are getting so popular nowadays is because many doctors of conventional medicine treat diseases as a prime matter and people secondly. Alternative" practitioners are often "holistic," they are considered to treat the mind, body and soul of the patient. Many people are attracted to the spiritual and metaphysical connections made by alternative health care practitioners. Many patients claim that their "healers" treat them as individuals, bearing in mind the specifications of the patient and seem to care about them, whereas conventional doctors often seem to lack good manners.
Conventional physicians often work in large hospitals and see hundreds or thousands of patients for their specific needs; therefore they hardly may remember the cases of illness of each of patient. "Alternative" therapists, on the contrary, often work out of their homes or small offices or clinics, and see much less patients. There is also an important thing. Those who seek help from a conventional physician usually do not care what his or her personal religious, metaphysical or spiritual beliefs are. Those who seek "alternative" medicine often admire the personality and worldview of their practitioner. For example, a person with diabetes who goes to an endocrinologist probably will not be interested in his or her physician’s belief in chi or any other spiritual or metaphysical notions. The fact that the ordinary doctor believes in God or the soul is marginal. What is the most important is the doctor’s knowledge and experience with the disease. If the doctor is kind and personable, that is all that the patient cares of. A cold and idle "alternative" practitioner would not have much business. A cold and indifferent conventional physician may have patients standing in line for treatment if he or she is an excellent physician.
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