‘Whole person’ health care advocated

Press, 24 January 1984, Page 8

‘Whole person’ health care advocated

PA Dunedin It is “imperative” that health professionals return, in more than a token way, to the “whole person” approach to health care, according to the director of mental health with the Health Department, Dr Basil James. In his opening address at the 1984 Society of Physiotherapists’ conference in Dunedin yesterday, Dr James said he hoped that health groups, while incorporating technology into their practices, would not ignore the human matrix within which a practice is conducted. He said that there was an implicit fantasy underlying the training of most health

professionals — that the task was simply to cure. “Yet a great part of the health professional’s function is supportive, sustaining the diminishing resources of deteriorating patients, and teaching them to do as much as possible with their remaining physical powers.”

Dr ' James, who is the honorary secretary of the executive board of the World Federation for Mental Health, said he believed that much of recent chiropractic success was attributable to the personalised nature of the treatment.

It may well be that health professionals had lost, or never in their training gained, the ability to listen,

and to take into account the patients’ personality needs which give some individual meaning to their illness and its symptoms, he said.

Dr James also touched on the relationship between physiotherapists and other health disciplines. He said health groups needed to keep alert to the changing boundaries of territory and authority in the health profession. “It is only in this way, I believe, that we will evolve a better and more efficient health service, satisfying all those who operate it and the patients.” More than 220 physiotherapists from throughout New Zealand are in Dunedin for the conference.