I congratulate your journal, and in particular Dr Genuis, for publishing an article that addresses the important issue of the rift between conventional and alternative health care.1
The points made in the article were both relevant and timely. I am a naturopathic doctor and my husband is a family doctor and an emergency physician, so I have seen first-hand how working together can achieve amazing results for patients. With the support of many allopathic doctors in the community, my patients believe they are getting the best of both worlds; and when the lines of communication are open, patients just receive better care. Our health care system in Canada is facing many challenges, and there are a lot of great solutions to be found in both conventional medical systems and alternative modalities. Naturopathic doctors can spend much more time with patients and offer them counseling and preventive strategies that many physicians simply do not have the time for and in many cases the training for. Patients are voicing a sense of frustration with the current model of health care, so why not work together to find solutions that are in the best interest of patients. We all have areas that we excel in, so let’s support one another and open our minds to the possibility of integration and acceptance of new ideas. After all, if we never tried anything new, we would still be bloodletting and using mercury as medicine.
Footnotes
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Competing interests
None declared
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