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| A Message
to Osteopaths |
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| It seems as though many of you
are upset with the way the General Osteopathic Council has managed and
continues to manage the affairs of our profession. Many of you spend time
seething and even fewer actually write in our magazines about your unhappiness
and even distrust. But all of you are spending valuable time on this issue
which is in fact a waste of time. I used to be anti-medicine but realised after a while that, not only was it time consuming, but what else did I have to offer. A growing body of students, especially those who have been on previous courses, are led to believe that osteopathy in Britain is a system of health care, only to find it is a system of minor manipulative orthopaedics. Students are complaining that they are not getting the “true” osteopathy. I have even read letters from students to osteopaths suggesting sitting out of lectures and with holding fees, if they are not taught the “true” osteopathy. Do you honestly think that the colleges would hold back the “true” osteopathy? The reason they do not teach it is because they don’t have any idea about what it really is. So don’t feel let down and don’t take it personally. Colleges of osteopathy are there to make you safe to practice and to start you off on a journey of discovery for the rest of your life. They are not there to turn you into an all curing physician. Courses are simple and simplistic. And, as I have said, if those teaching the course knew what osteopathy was they would be teaching it. As far as a philosophy goes all I hear is “osteopathy is a philosophy.” Well, where is it? What direction is this philosophy taking? Who are the proponents of this philosophy? What form does this philosophy take? What is the time line for this philosophy? How is it applied? It has all become a little Romantic. And as for “Classical” osteopathy, whatever that is, if they knew what they were doing they would be teaching philosophy, but they aren't. As soon as all this is sorted out then osteopaths will follow you. Osteopathy is a truth but it must be performed and experienced, not mimicked. If you do not practice, as opposed to manipulate, then you cannot be an osteopath. Don’t waste valuable time being anti-General Osteopathic Council, anti-medicine and anti-college. This is time consuming. Instead, show them what needs to be done, that’s a lot harder than moaning. And don’t forget A.T. Still used drugs and surgery. He was against heroic dosing and osteopathy was “a reformation of the then practice of medicine,” not an alternative to medicine, because there was no medicine as we know it at that time. Osteopathy was and is more powerful than medicine because it includes the thoughts of the practitioner as a reasoning entity within the application of osteopathy. Reasoning is part of the philosophy. Manipulation is not osteopathy, drugs are not osteopathy and surgery is not osteopathy. Osteopathy is a philosophy or worldview adopted by a physician. It is a physician-health-dominant-centred medicine not a procedure-patient-disease-dominant centred medicine. It is the natural-organic understanding of the practitioner that is the important starting point not the disease. So let's lighten up on the General Osteopathic Council and the colleges. They will all fall on their own swords. And we shall be looking the other way at more interesting things. Walter Llewellyn McKone, DO 2003. |
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