The word heal comes from the old English “Haelan” which means not simply to cure, but “to make whole”.
When modern medicine adopted a scientific approach to healing, it made great strides in finding ways to cure a multitude of maladies that invaded human biology, from traumatic to microbiological to inflammatory to metabolic to genetic.
However, the real tradition of medicine is healing, not curing. Healing takes into account the entire person, from individual biology to individual cognition to individual goals and values. A good healer will collaborate with their patient to find the right combination of technology and techniques to achieve both cure and healing. That means looking not only at the simple application of medical knowledge and technology, but at the consequences of their use within the entire context of the individual patient’s life.
Unfortunately, with technology now so powerful that it dominates the healing relationship, and with the efforts to control of the costs of that technology so burdensome, it can be difficult for a doctor and a patient to achieve that collaboration.
We at Operam Healthcare have over 35 years of experience collaborating with patients, and we are dedicated to helping people learn to collaborate with their doctors to rebuild those healing relationships.
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