April 17, 2004

President Winterstein, Trustees, Faculty, Family and Friends and Graduates of the April 2004 Class of NUHS, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.  As you heard I am a Clinical Psychologist and President of your partner school, The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.  

You probably know that since this fall we have been operating our DuPage County campus here at NUHS, and it feels like we are building a meaningful relationship.  I think, as the sociologists say, living together is an important step.  

Our disciplines and professions share much in common.  We are each  aimed primarily at enhancing a patient's overall health and well being without the use of drugs or surgery.  But I think we share more than philosophy and orientation.  As non- allopathic, complementary and alternative health professions, we also share the struggle for acceptance and recognition.  We are partners and allies in the legal and regulatory battles with the allopathic medical profession.

Certainly you have made great strides in terms of acceptance, and we salute you. Less than three weeks ago Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi issued an historic blueprint for formalizing the full inclusion of chiropractic physicians into our nation’s health care system.  I have told my psychologist colleagues that we have much to learn from the chiropractic profession in terms of your commitment to advocacy, public policy and public education.  I urge each of you to continue the traditions and practices that your President, Jim Winterstein, and your faculty have been leaders in, of engaging the public.

More than 30 million people, including me, visited chiropractic physicians last year for a variety of conditions, and more and more health care practitioners, like me, are referring their patients to doctors of chiropractic.

Our shared orientation and shared struggles…and my status as a long time chiropractic patient…combine to make me feel very much at home here at your great school.  I have been a chiropractic patient for more than twenty years and have come to understand the different perspectives within your profession from the vantage point of seeing different kinds of chiropractors.  As I researched your discipline these last few months I came to see that some of these differences, just as in Psychology, are institutionalized – you have multiple professional organizations as we do, some serious disagreements, as we do, and one might conclude that for every two chiropractic physicians, as for every two psychologists, there are three opinions and three societies.  

But jokes aside, you should know that my family chiropractic physician is an NUHS graduate, and both as a health care professional and as a patient I salute the middle road of chiropractic your university has adopted along with its commitment to primary care.  I am gratified to see that you are treating complex neuropsychological conditions such as learning disabilities, again underscoring that while a condition may be brain-based or physical, its treatment need not be invasive.

A friend shared with me that she believed the root of the word patient is empathy…and pain.  And that the root of the word therapy means to pay attention.  And you are the embodiment of this healing combination.  Your orientation is empathic and sensitive to the discomfort of your patients, and you are certainly careful to pay attention.  The notion of “feeling with” your client seems to me to be central to your orientation.  There is an active listening that characterizes your relationship—and I would suggest that this alone is a healing process.  In this world of instant and incredibly superficial interactions, the moments when we feel truly heard…and understood are indeed healing.  I once treated a young adolescent, and as he presented his situation, it became incredibly clear that no matter what category of the Diagnostic Manual I used to describe him…he was, at the core of it, a lonely person.  Loneliness has been defined as feeling that no one really knows you.  And surely you all know too well, that pain—especially chronic pain, can contribute to a truly debilitating kind of loneliness and isolation.  So when you actively listen—when you feel with your patients, and give significant credence to their account of the malady—you are taking a dramatic step toward knowing them—and toward easing the often acute pain of loneliness.  

Empathy and attention--It seems obvious, as though this combination should be a given, an assumed reality—but you and I both know that that is not the case.  And in my experience, your commitment to a genuine relationship with your patients goes even further.  

You trust your patients, and you respect them as informants and even more importantly, as partners in a total healing process.   Your approach is personal, hands-on, and it takes place in the context of a relationship.  This orientation feels very familiar to me as a psychologist, and very comforting to me as a patient.  You believe in the power of the human connection.

Of course your approach is demanding. It asks more of the patient than the purely allopathic medical model.  And that is a challenge.  It puts you in the challenging and courageous position of paddling upstream.  

Again, I invite you to think about these times of no time—of impatience and manic levels of unfocused energy…of a population that lives in fear of missing something…your approach runs against the grain.  These are surely not thoughtful times.  It takes too long to think things through.  Instead we search frantically for the fix—just enough to get us through until the next crisis or flare-up.  We in the Psychology field are constantly frustrated by the fascination with everything brief—if it’s fast, its fine.  PROCESS has become a pejorative term…it implies time taken to look carefully at a problem, and think about prevention and strategies…and these concepts feel strangely anachronistic in the hyper active context of today’s attitudes toward work and leisure.  There is certain desperation…a sense of overdrawn purposefulness—everything must be productive, goal oriented, objective driven…with no space left to consider implications, let alone process.  And that hectic careening down the road is dangerous.  

Depressed?  Take this.  Anxious?  Here, take this.  Trouble straightening out your back?  Here, take this.  Quick fixes, instant relief, symptomatic, superficial responses, and more important, no responsibility on the part of the practitioner or the patient.  No sense that there is something causing the discomfort, no sense that it might be possible to prevent re-injury, or that there is anything the patient can learn that would ease the suffering and offer compensatory strengthening that might even improve the quality of life moving forward from the episode.  

Against the current.  All I can say is keep paddling—and we’re right in the boat with you.  We share a belief in the power of process.  We believe in staying with the work and not giving up. I am proud to learn and be inspired by your devotion to Deep work, deep belief, sustained attention, genuine empathy, and an authentic partnership with your patients.  Your patients are not encouraged to be passive and helpless.  They are encouraged to be honest and to work with you—to join in the search for understanding of root causes, and real healing.  

Let’s face it, neither you nor I have the tools to mask symptoms.  We are sentenced to coping with the reality in front of us…to coping with what is—and I believe that is the correct and most powerful approach—that this holistic view of the patient is the path to real and more lasting healing.  Thank you for your work, your approach, and for the powerful example you set.  I know that the allopathic medical profession has sought to marginalize chiropractic…and psychology.  But our patients do not see us on the periphery of their care; they see us right in the middle of the path to wellness.  And they are right.

I have been your patient.  And that has afforded me a great perspective from which to speak with you today.  I have been in pain and you have helped me.  Some of my discomforts have been very typical for you, I’m sure.  When I was in a serious car accident I was fortunate enough to know that I could call and proceed to a chiropractic physician’s office and not an emergency room.  The twisted knee that happened in a racket ball game was not an earth-shaking trauma, but it hurt very badly.  And it kept me from functioning normally and sleeping normally.  It changed my whole pattern of daily life, so for me it was a serious interruption.  And you respected that.  Yes, you offered physical therapy, but there was much more involved.  I learned exercises and I looked at my diet and weight—I was taught how to prevent the injury as well as how to recover successfully.  I still do the deep abdominal exercises I was taught that would prevent back problems.  You are educators and that is a deeply respectful and helpful role with your patients.  I know—I felt empowered, not reduced; I felt hopeful not dependent; I felt confident, not resigned.  

A lot to learn from a twisted knee don’t you think?  I certainly do.  Yes, you rely on science.  My chiropractic physician had an x-ray done…but my own personal report counted just as much.  I was trusted and enlisted in the struggle—and it worked wonderfully.    My primary care allopathic physician recommended surgery.  I may need that one day, but fifteen years later, I’m still fully functional, generally pain-free and have not had surgery.
 
I believe that you truly are the health care providers of the future, and the leading edge of your field, reaching out in a holistic way to healing.  Nutrition, overall health…you are clearly moving toward a leading position as a primary health care profession.  You have moved in many important directions in understanding the human condition —you understand the importance of the many factors that shape our health:  diet and stress… nutrition and physical activity, to name just a few.  NUHS is in the forefront of this movement and as its newest graduates, you will be that movement’s newest leaders.

You were the National College of Chiropractic, and now you are the National University of Health Sciences.  As chiropractic physicians you are the pivotal program around which this newly evolving university spins…you are the anchor.  That’s a responsibility and an opportunity.  Your university will offer new health-related programs and continue to host our programs in psychology…I am excited about your commitment, and believe it makes great sense.  Please know that my colleagues and I wish you great success in this holistic endeavor.  Your search for root causes is a shared one…

We have begun discussing a shared curriculum…to work together to build a truly holistic healing model. Your students will study with us and ours with you.  Think about the possible synergies between psychology and chiropractic working with victims of physical trauma, disabilities, prevention and wellness.  Can we continue moving together as we offer something more than pills to people seeking health?  Can we begin to gain some ground in the battle to invite active engagement…can we convince our patients and their health care providers of the lasting benefits of education and exercise…of going beyond the quick fix to the lasting change?  We can and we will.

I have much to learn from you and about you.  I remember when I first toured your campus, and was nearly overcome with the smells of the anatomy laboratory…what could that be?  Cadavers?  Here?  Well of course they are.  And I am embarrassed to admit my surprise.  Maybe it’s because you are so connected to the life force that it’s hard to imagine you even learning from a lifeless form.  You have the depth of training, but you add the human connection and that makes all the difference.

On this important day in your lives and careers, let me thank you for your leadership on behalf of those who suffer, and for your clear voice amidst the noise of the healthcare chaos.  Empathy, empowerment, partnership…and a genuine commitment to the process of healing.  Welcome to the struggle, and to a world of patients in need of your expertise and your holistic approach.      Thank you.