I am just back from the Institute for Functional Medicine meetings in Dallas, Texas. Over 1200 doctors from all over the world, including 20 countries, attended this meeting. It is a record number for this organization. I am one of the original members of this organization, and I remember our first meeting had 50 doctors!

The subject of the meeting, as I told you last week was “Illuminating the Energy Spectrum: Exploring the Evidence and Emerging Clinical Solutions for Managing Pain, Fatigue, and Cognitive Dysfunction.”

My favorite lectures were by David Perlmutter, M.D. who is a prominent integrative neurologist in Florida. I’ve known David for over 20 years. He discussed at length many of the now understood contributing causes of the dreaded Alzheimer’s disease.

Click here to read my blog post about Alzheimer’s Disease.

I have accepted an opportunity to teach medical students at the prestigious David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, starting this September.

After more than 30 years of practicing integrative medicine, I realize that it is time to share what I have learned and what I've been doing with young medical students and medical doctors, as well as the general public.

Through my blog I have been sharing my knowledge with the general public. However, I felt it was a necessity in my life to also be able to train young medical doctors.

Starting this September, I will be teaching a course to second-year medical students called "Doctoring". In this course I will be paired with a psychologist and we will be teaching young medical students how to interview patients, and get their history and how to help patients deal with difficult problems, from drug addiction to a cancer diagnosis. This course is not so much about the science of medicine at the art of meeting with the patient, and meeting their needs.

A recent study in  JAMA showed that if a patient comes to their doctor with more than two complaints, that the chance of the second complaint ever being addressed is 8%. This study was shocking to me as an integrative doctor, because I recognize that the body is an inter — connected web of organs and not just a narrow view of one organ system and one complaint. So knowing ALL the patients symptoms is important.

This course at UCLA is a required course and all medical students must take it. It goes on their permanent deans record that they use to get into a residency program.

I will be specifically teaching eight or nine students throughout the year. I expect it to be a very fun course. That is because UCLA uses what are called "standardized patients". When I heard this expression I asked what it meant?  A "standardized patient" is a professional actor who has been taught and trained to act out all parts of any given disease that the doctors are assigned for the day. The "patient"  will know the signs and symptoms of the disease and they will be able to intelligently answer the medical students questions while the psychologist and I look on and teach the students how to interact with them as a patient.

My partner in the course,who is a psychologist, has been doing this for a number of years and she told me that it is not only very valuable but also can be fun.

I look forward to telling you about the "cases" that we see, but  most importantly I  look forward to helping the students to learn that they must listen to the whole patient, with a compassionate ear.

It is wonderful that medical schools are starting to do this.

What has been your experience with interacting with physicians? Have you had to interact with physicians taking care of a loved one? How has your experience been? Let me know what you think?

I was one of 5 speakers to a pre-med class of students at UCLA who are taking a course entitled "Introduction to Integrative East-West Medicine". The students came from all over the world to study.
My friend Ka-kit Hui, M.D., F.A.C.P is the Chairman of the Course and invited me to share with the students my perspective on integrative medicine as a primary care doctor in private practice.

The other speakers included my friend Myles Spar MD, MPH who is the director of the Venice Integrative Medicine Clinic, at the Venice Family Clinic. Also Richard Pietras MD, Ph.D. who is the chairman of the Stile Program in Integrative Oncology at UCLA spoke. And Ping Ho, MA,MPH who is the director of the UCLArts and Healing Center spoke.

We each spoke to the students about our work and showed slides of our offices and projects.

After our talks we then all sat on a panel and answered questions from the students about integrative medicine from our perspective.

I had a really good time and enjoyed meeting my colleagues to see what they are doing. I look forward to more teaching opportunities in the near future.

Here is a nice picture of the five of us!

From left to right : Dr Pietras, Dr Hui, Ping Ho, Dr Soram, Dr Spar
 
 

I will be talking about integrative medicine to pre-med students and professors this Tuesday morning at UCLA. This course is chaired by the head of the UCLA Department of integrative Medicine Kah Kit Hui, M.D.

I will give you a full report about the conference afterwards.