07.01.07
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has established an Integrative Medicine Consult Service at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center, the world’s largest hospital devoted to research. This service will provide physicians, nurses, and other members of the Clinical Center healthcare team the ability to discuss complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies with knowledgeable medical staff from the consult service and learn how various CAM practices might complement or interact with a patient’s care as a research participant at the Clinical Center. CAM is not a new concept at the NIH Clinical Center. In fact, the Clinical Center’s Pain and Palliative Care Service and the Rehabilitation Medicine Department offer acu-puncture, Reiki, hypnosis, guided imagery, massage therapy, acupuncture, tai chi and qi gong training, while the Pharmacy Department consults on herbals and herb/drug interactions, and conducts research in these areas. The Integrative Medicine Consult Service will coordinate the resources of these existing services to meet the needs of the Clinical Center staff and its patients. In addition to offering clinical consultation regarding CAM therapies, the service will establish a research program embedded in NIH’s clinical and translational research structure and provide CAM education for NIH staff, patients and their families. The director of the consult service will be Patrick Mansky, MD, a clinical oncologist and researcher at NCCAM.