Jeanne Drisko, MD discusses building a new model of integrated functional medicine by training the next generation and winning over established clinicians. Jeffrey Bland, PhD calls it a reasonable social change gaining traction as evidence accumulates and new doctors enter the field.
What we're trying to do then is build a new model to show, to tell the next generation of healthcare practitioners, to show them how they're going to be taking care of patients. And what's beautiful is all of the people that have come before me and are standing beside me in the integrated medicine world that have taught me so much and continue to teach me so much. So this is what we have to do. We have to pass it on to the next generation. And they are so hungry. And even the attending staff, the people that are old and crusty like me, they're also becoming more open minded. They're seeing, wow, this is working. This might be okay. This isn't so wacky as we thought it was. So it's this grassroots organization just teaching in medical schools. I think that's so critical.
Well, Dr. Drisco, that's about the most inspiring, enlightening and hopeful message that I think we've heard recently on Functional Medicine Update. You know, I think your leadership kind of shines through by example. You've done the heavy lifting. You've gone through the appropriate academic training and credentialing. You've kept your search for knowledge and learning alive and well. You've inspired people by your enthusiasm and your sense that there's a better horizon that's in our future. All of these things, to me, kind of focus on a central theme that seems to be true about all great social changes. And that is the concept that truth wills out. It may take some time for truth to find its way through the tortuous path of selective interests and control, but eventually a truth will out. And it seems that there is a central truth to this field that you're describing. Maybe not all the details are exactly I dotted and T's crossed, probably, precisely, but the general construct is really, as my father would say, it fulfills a rule of reasonableness. There's something reasonable about what you're saying. And as we get more data and more clinical information and more young, fresh minds that are really searching for the right answers, it seems that your model that you provided is here at the end, which is one of optimism and hope is a very likely outcome.
