Teri Garvey tells Sylvia Thompson a regulatory system for complementary medicine is essential
Complementary therapists must become more proactive and inform the public of their professional registers of practitioners and their codes of ethics and good practice, according to the chairwoman of the report of the National Working Group on the Regulation of Complementary Therapists which was launched last week says.
Teri Garvey also said the public must seek this information before attending a complementary therapist.
She hopes the Department of Health will set dates soon for the facilitated work days for various therapy organisations so that they can form federations of therapies. This, she believes, will be the necessary first step for the harmonisation of educational standards.
"I believe it is important to have overall management bodies for each individual major therapy and ultimately the establishment of a Complementary Therapies Council for the whole sector," she says.
In the report, concerns are also raised about training organisations which create their own register of practitioners and which employ tutors who have inadequate or no experience of clinical practice themselves.
The report also highlights the lack of qualifications of beauticians and medical doctors to practise certain therapies.
"Some beauty therapists gain qualifications in reflexology after a module and a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Similarly, doctors have to be properly qualified in therapies such as homeopathy to call themselves homeopathic doctors," she says.
Garvey believes that the new 10-level framework of qualifications from the National Qualification Authority of Ireland will offer a route to independent validation of education and training courses for complementary therapies.
Speaking about the process itself, she says: "The whole experience was a thoroughly positive one. Complementary therapists are very keen to have the sector regulated and this report recommends statutory regulation for therapists practising therapies of a high-risk category [ acupuncturists, herbalists and traditional Chinese medicine practitioners] and voluntary self-regulation for all other therapies."
She admits that Minister for Health Mary Harney prefers "a robust system of voluntary self-regulation" which is, in fact the trend internationally among complementary therapies. Osteopaths and chiropractors in Ireland are, however, seeking statutory regulation via the Health and Social Care Professions Act.
As a user of complementary therapies, the producer and presenter of several radio series on complementary therapies, and a broadcast journalist - and not a therapist - Teri Garvey was an ideal choice as chairwoman of the National Working Group on the Regulation of Complementary Therapists.
Appointed by former minister for health Micheál Martin in November 2002, she steered the group of therapists, representatives from the Department of Health, the Department of Education and the Consumer Association of Ireland through complex debates on minimum educational standards of various therapists, the importance of professional associations with powers to strike off members who fail to meet codes of ethics and codes of good practice.
However, she admits that the efficacy of each therapy was beyond the brief and scope of the report. "Whether a therapy works or not, people are going to complementary therapists and the important issue is about protecting the public," she says.
She welcomes Harney's emphasis on going to your GP first if there is a condition causing concern. She says there can be risks involved with therapists who are inadequately trained or simply underqualified to recognise undiagnosed medical conditions.
"To say things like you've brought an illness on yourself and you can cure yourself is simplistic. Early diagnosis saves lives. I don't use the terms alternative therapy or alternative medicine because why would anyone want to pass up on the benefits of modern medicine but what I'd like to see is mutual respect and tolerance between conventional medicine and complementary therapies," she says.
For Garvey, the ideal scenario would be for complementary therapists to work alongside conventional medical practitioners, each drawing on their different diagnostic and treatment skills and knowledge base for the overall benefit of the patient.
According to Garvey, the model of integrated healthcare is slowly gaining ground internationally and studies of the use of complementary therapies for chronic conditions and in cardiac programmes in the United States and Britain have shown cost-savings in terms of fewer GP visits, fewer referrals to specialists and lower drug-use. Many studies also reported high patient-satisfaction levels with integrated healthcare.
In Ireland, cancer support centres linked to various acute hospitals offer treatments in therapies such as reflexology, aromatherapy, massage and yoga.
Complementary therapies have also helped older people in residential and day centres and in the field of palliative medicine.
There are a few examples of herbalists and acupuncturists working part-time in GP practices dealing with patients with chronic conditions.
On a personal level, Garvey speaks openly about her own experience of cancer, which began in 1965 with a diagnosis of Hodgkins Disease at the age of 15.
Thirty years later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. This cancer was deemed to be a result of the high levels of radiation she received for the initial cancer. And then, last year - 10 years after her breast cancer - cancer of the spine was discovered, following back pain.
"The way I look at it is that I live a very full life which has been interspersed with bouts of cancer. My general health has been fantastic. My GP is also a homeopath and my family and I have all benefited hugely from homeopathy.
"I currently find visualisations and reflexology an enormous help while I am having chemotherapy. My oncologist is very supportive of my use of complementary therapies, provided I've discussed them with him in advance because there are certain therapies which are unsuitable during chemotherapy," she says.
Garvey speaks highly of the professional therapy organisations who have worked hard on a voluntary basis to join together to form federations of therapies.
She does, however, admit that there are some outstanding problems regarding reaching agreement on minimum education standards within some therapy groups.
She is also adamant that the best way to reduce the number of sham or rogue practitioners is for the professional therapy organisations to speak out when such cases arise in the media.
"I have heard of how homeopathy in Mayo lost business after the case with Mineke Kamper.
"It was later revealed that she wasn't even a homoeopath and wasn't on the Irish Society of Homeopaths register of practitioners," she says.