by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post we looked at how the subjective description of a patient’s condition actually embodied much more knowledge about a patient’s condition than is commonly recognized. This could be a valuable resource for a doctor. How does such knowledge actually fare...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
I concluded my last post emphasizing that the patient’s subjective presentation of symptoms does not exist in a vacuum. I pointed out that patients often describe what their condition based on what they “feel” is happening, or with fear of what they “think” is...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In an earlier set of posts, I’ve addressed the SOAP formula (Subjective, objective assessment and plan) which is supposed to inform doctor note-taking with new patients. In the next set of posts, I want to explore the subjective-objective aspect of the SOAP formula...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
My last post concluded by raising the importance of meaning in treatment. Having patients share their interpretation of what their symptoms mean is the most effective way of helping them regain their health. Implicit the self-diagnosis is the solution. My experience...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
By this point, anyone who has been following this series of blog posts will realize that an integrative approach to health is necessary, encompassing the patient’s full understanding and commitment to therapy. Treating a “disease” without treating the person who...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
What is the doctor’s role in the disillusion of patients suffering in pain? Does our failure to fully disclose the subtleties of dealing with pain, opting for the easy short term “solution,” play a destructive role? Research in psychoneuroimmunology shows the...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
In my last post, I discussed how understanding the mind-body connection enables doctor’s to better LISTEN to symptoms. Toward the end, I cited the case of pain as an illustration. Today I want to explore that topic a little more deeply. Consider the experience of...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
The term “prescription” requires exploring the patient-doctor relationship. It should reaffirm the doctor’s purpose, opening up the healing dialogue. My conviction is that the body’s symptoms call upon us to LISTEN: they’re trying to say something. This is true of...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
My last post warned of the dangers in treating the patient’s symptoms as an inventory of body parts to be discretely assessed. An antidote to this misguided thinking is in recognizing the mind-body connection. Understanding the factors which may have contributed to a...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Having considered the subjective and objective aspect of the SOAP process, today I want to discuss the last two parts of that acronym: the assessment and plan steps. I’ll lean on current research in psychoneuroimmunology and pain to illustrate that the categories used...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post, as part of an examination of the SOAP concept, informing doctor note taking for initial patient interviews, I explored the meaning of the idea of “subjective.” Today I’ll look at the next term in that acronym, “objective.” I actually call into...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Over the next few posts, I’m going to introduce you to four key ideas that we have to understand to make a path to a better health care approach. These are the “SOAP” (i.e., Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan) notes doctors take during their initial patient...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
The new paradigm in healthcare that I’ve been discussing in this series of blog posts is sometimes mistaken for simply alternative modalities of practice. The choice of modality is not unimportant, but neither is it a panacea for sound practice. Valuable as was my...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last post, I began a discussion of the paths that lead us to the new healthcare paradigm. There I discussed the personal experience of a disenchanted law student who discovered that justice through the law wasn’t all I’d initially thought it cracked up to be....
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my last blog post, I discussed the emergence of a new paradigm in healthcare and some of the opportunities it was beginning to open up. Such important changes in how people think, feel and act are not expected to come out of nowhere. So, from where has all this new...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
In my book, What Patients Don’t Say, If Doctors Don’t Listen, I discussed how the day-to-day challenges of our practices can wear down the initial inspiration to heal for many healthcare professionals. It doesn’t need to be that way, though. There is a new paradigm,...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | Addressing Your Pain
The problem with pain is that most people who experience it are convinced of its presence and when as a therapist you suggest that there may be a way of changing your relationship to it, they can feel threatened. The first threat is personal; in that, they may fear...
by Manon Bolliger, facilitator & retired naturopath with 30+ years of practice | About Your Health
Most doctors and healthcare practitioners enter the field with great expectations and a strong desire to help people. Many have a personal story, often of a family member or relative who suffered. Whether or not they died or were “saved,” a light was turned on because...
