 Truly integrative healthcare rests on a foundation of cooperation and coordination among health practitioners for the benefit of their patients. Sometimes this occurs in a group practice under one roof; in other cases, it takes the form of interdisciplinary networking across a town, metropolitan area or a region. In all cases, it requires teamwork based on mutual respect, active listening, and creative problem solving. Leonard Wisneski, MD, recently named to head the Integrated Healthcare Policy Consortium, is an integrative medicine pioneer.
Dr. Wisneski is Clinical Professor of Medicine at George Washington University Medical Center and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Georgetown University, where he is a founding member of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Curriculum Planning Committee. He teaches a course at Georgetown University entitled “The Western Approach to Eastern Medicine.” Dr. Wisneski is currently the Dean and President of the University of Sint Eustatius School of Medicine, a medical school devoted to integrated medicine, medical education research, and innovation.
Dr. Wisneski served as Vice Chairman of the NIH Consensus Panel on Acupuncture and Chairman of the NIH Advisory Board on Frontier Sciences at the University of Connecticut. He holds fellowship positions in The American College of Physicians, The American College of Nutrition, and The American Institute of Stress. He served on the board of the American Holistic Medical Association and was President of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine. He has published over 30 scientific articles and a textbook, The Scientific Basis of Integrative Medicine (CRC Press, 2009) now in its second edition.
In 1999, Dr. Wisneski co-founded and served as the regional president and medical director of American WholeHealth, an integrated, multi-practitioner center. He also served in the role of Medical Director and Chief Medical Editor of Integrative Medicine Communications, a publishing company which produced textbooks and newsletters devoted to this new field of medicine.
Dr. Wisneski graduated from Thomas Jefferson Medical College and performed his postgraduate training in internal medicine and endocrinology in the George Washington University healthcare system, where he served as Chief Medical Resident in Internal Medicine. From 1977-1997, Dr. Wisneski was the Corporate Medical Director of Marriott International, Inc., and Director of Medical Education at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland, an affiliate of George Washington University Medical School and Children’s National Medical Center.
When you went to medical school, I assume you were not taught how to work collaboratively with members of other professions such as chiropractors, massage therapists and acupuncturists. In your medical practice, when did you start working with members of non-medical professions?
It was within the first year or two.
What led you in that direction?
Within the first couple of years of medical practice, in the mid-1970s, as an extension of my research in my endocrinology fellowship, I did a lot of work with the hormone, calcitonin. I was on the international lecture circuit, and I was invited to an osteopathic school in Des Moines, Iowa. There was a Professor Zinc in attendance, who was one of the leaders in osteopathic manipulation. At the time, I think he was in his 80s. When I got off the plane to go to give the lecture, I twisted the wrong way and it was very obvious that I had wrenched my back.
I had no prior experience with complementary and alternative medicine. I gave the lecture on osteoporosis, and Professor Zinc, from the audience, said he was aware that I was in discomfort. He then had a table brought out. In front of about 500 people, he told me to lie on the table and that he would come up and treat me. I had a picture in my mind of anything from going directly to the hospital, to immediate paraplegia. |
