Holistic Health Care - What is it?
On September 17 2009, Professor Derick Wade gave the third Michael Benson lecture at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre's Annual General Meeting. His subject was 'Holistic Health Care. What is it and how do we achieve it?' (pdf; 583KB) The paper, which is available for download, discusses and expands upon the topic of holistic health care. Slides are also available. Slides are available as a pdf (above) and as a powerpoint presentation (below).
Holistic practice in medicine is widely claimed, but rarely explained or justified. The article considers what holism is, and what holistic health care might be. It shows that the best way to achieve holism in health care is to use a biopsychosocial model of illness similar to that used by the world Health Organisation in its International Clasification of Functioning. The article also gives some evidence supporting the holistic approach and shows how a holistic approach might improve both clinical care and delivery of health care.
The author, Derick Wade has been interested in models of illness and design and delivery of rehabilitation services since about 1980, and has written many articles developing the model proposed here. He is grateful to the very many people who have discussed his ideas, often disagreeing and thus improving the model. He hopes that further debate will further improve the model. He welcomes email correspondence (derick.wade@noc.nhs.uk).
The downloads are subject to copyright but may be used freely. Acknowledgement would be appreciated but formal permission is not required.' Holistic Health Care. What is it and how do we achieve it?' (699KB) is also available as a power point presentation.