University of Pennsylvania med school incorporates alternative medicine

• Doctors at Penn are working with Tai Sophia Institute, an alternative medicine school in Maryland, on a program to teach medical students about herbal therapies, meditation and other approaches that are increasingly popular with the public but largely exist outside the realm of mainstream medicine.
• "We're not going to turn great surgeons into acupuncturists or herbalists; that's not the idea," said Robert Duggan, co-founder of Tai Sophia.
• "The goal is that Penn medical school graduates will be highly able to speak with patients about how to guide these things into their overall care."
• More than a third of American adults have tried alternative therapies -- including yoga, meditation, herbs and the Atkins diet -- according to a 2002 government survey of 31,000 people, the largest study of its kind in the United States.
• "More and more there's a willingness by conventional schools to recognize the CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) schools as having this expertise," Haramati said.
• Georgetown students work with a massage therapy school, for example, and Tufts University students work with an acupuncture school, he said.
• More than 95 of the nation's 125 medical schools require some kind of complementary and alternative medicine coursework, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
• "If you had raised this 10 years ago everyone would have sneered at it," Fishman said.
• One program, for example, will teach doctors about herbal medicines so they can better serve their patients who are already taking them.
• The idea is to teach the cardiology staff how to develop personalized therapy plans -- including everything from meditation and massage to reflexology and aromatherapy -- to decrease patient stress, pain and anxiety.
• For example, new brain imaging technology will allow researchers to physically explore how things like herbs, acupuncture, even prayer, can make people feel better.