Bristol and Bath Integrated Medicine Directory (BBIMD)

Background

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• Healthy Bristol founder Dr Rosy Daniel became inspired to set up Healthy Bristol working on three out of four of the early working groups of the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for Integrated Health in the mid nineties. During the early consultative work performed with The Royal Colleges of Medicine and General Practice, three main obstacles for the development of Integrated Medicine were identified. These were:
  
  
• Lack of clarity about the training and standards of integrated medicine practitioners.
• Lack of an adequate educational interface between conventional and integrated medicine practitioners.
• Lack of sufficient high quality research evidence (or lack of dissemination of the existing research evidence base) on holistic/integrated medicine approaches.
  
  

Dr Daniel felt inspired to try to help eliminate these obstacles for the doctors and health care practitioners of Bristol by forming Healthy Bristol.

The first of these obstacles is tackled by the creation of the Bristol and Bath Integrated Medicine Directory which will register practitioners who:

• Belong to organisations with a good self-regulatory framework or statutory regulation;
  
• Have high quality training with good continuing professional development;
  
• Practise regularly to a high professional standard in their therapy;
  
• Would like to offer their services for integration into mainstream healthcare settings;
  
• Have good facilities for their practice;
  
• Encourage self-responsibility and independence in their clients/patients;
  
• Are aware of the need for good inter-professional practice;
  
• Are in on-going professional supervision;
  
• Have made a good risk assessment of their practice that they are able to communicate to others.
  
• Have audit or feedback mechanisms in place to understand well how their services are being received by their clients and colleagues, and use this information to improve continuously their service.
  
  

The second obstacle will be overcome by improving access to Integrated Medicine education and interdisciplinary meetings for doctors, organisations and IM practitioners registering in the Directory.

The third will be overcome by making the existing IM research evidence base available to doctors, the Primary Care Trusts, Health Care Practitioners (HCPs) and the public; also, by starting new research to assess the benefit of innovative IM projects in Bristol. To this end Healthy Bristol has already facilitated the setting up of the the Bristol Complementary Medicine Research Group (in collaboration with the mid-Devon Primary Care Research Group) to research the benefits of Bristol's Complementary Health in Partnerships Programme in Barton Hill, East Bristol (part of the Community at Heart project).

Through all these means, Healthy Bristol intends to help establish standards for good practice for innovative and cost-effective Integrated Medicine. The Bristol community will be able to enjoy the highest possible standard of IM as well as the benefits of choice in their care and treatment whilst also increasing levels of self awareness, self responsibility and ultimately, independence and positive health.

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CREATION OF THE DIRECTORY