Toward integrated medicine for all in the 21st century

The art of medicine - the art of healing the sick and injured sentient beings around this world - requires the physician’s total commitment - body, mind and spirit. Of course, this is difficult to empirically specify or determine. This paper considers what may be designated the five “c’s” of integrated medicine, namely, (1) complementarity (non-conventional therapies which legitimately complement biomedical procedures), (2) competence (encompassing rigorous basic training and ongoing professional development as well as evidence-based research), (3) compassion (the touchstone of the art and science of medicine), (4) conservatism (as the Oath of Hippocrates abjures, try your utmost best to do no harm whatsoever) and (5) communication (between physicians and patients as well as among physicians and other health care practitioners and administrators regarding the well-being and quality of life of each and every single patient). These are not offered in this paper as a mere panacea, but as a judicious injunction to help broaden our present biomedical approach to primary care and implement the integrated-scientific and humanistic-medicine of the 21st century.