You work at the Brigham then? Funny, my wife used to work there.
According to the article I found - the Brigham doesn’t actually charge for Reiki - it’s all done by volunteers. So they aren’t making money out of it. And there’s a difference between being one surgeon at a huge hospital that starts offering Reiki for free, and being 1/3 of the ownership of a practice that starts offering it for money:
“Yes, the hospital offers Reiki now. Personally, I think it’s BS, but I’m one doctor out of hundreds, and there’s nothing I can do about it. At least they don’t charge for it.”
vs.
“Yes, the practice offers Reiki now. Personally, I think it’s BS, but I was outvoted by my other 2 partners. But at least I can buy a new car now!”
Goodness! It sounds like your wife likes treating with this doctor. I sure do hope she gets your permission to continue seeing her!
Has your wife asked for a consult on the question of “Should I continue to see this doctor?” or is this a solid you’re doing for her at your own prompting?
The point is not whether transplant surgery is the same as reiki. The question was whether you would be seen in a practice where reiki was offered. The majority answer here is “no, I wouldn’t go near the place.”
So most posters here would not go to this hospital even if it was the only hope of getting a critical procedure done. That’s OK, there’s another world-class hospital two blocks away. You could go there. Wait, no you couldn’t, they offer reiki as well. There’s another hospital a few miles away. Maybe they could treat you there. No, they can’t. Guess why?
In fact, I googled all of the major hospitals in this city. They ALL offer reiki, or referalls to reiki practicioners. So in a city full of world-class hospitals, you wouldn’t be able to find a single place that could treat you.
You’d have to head to another city. Maybe you could go to the Mayo Clinic. Or Johns Hopkins.
Yes, I’d stay with the doctor. Reiki isn’t for me but there’s a LOT about the body we don’t know and there may be something to some of these alternative treatments - as long as the doctor didn’t start withholding traditional Western treatments from me and trying to talk me into getting my chakras aligned or whatnot, I have no problem with it.
Ah, my mistake. Well then, yes, I’d go to a good clinic that offered a bullshit service. No place is perfect, and money talks. But I’d find the whole practice a little iffy. If the doc herself was performing Reiki, I’d probably want to go somewhere else, but chances are, it’s someone on the side, like the massage therapist who works in my hospital.
If I were the OP and had a good outcome with my first surgery, I’d definitely return for the second.
I think that’s the difference right there. A physician who works in the same building as a Reiki practitioner is not necessarily a quack. If it’s one-third of the practice, I’d be a little more suspect.
I’m supposed to have a meeting with a PA today. I might get her take on it. But I think she’s too busy to stop by.
The placebo effect is not the same thing as transplant surgery, but it’s a lot more than “I think this is going to work, and so I am going to delude myself into feeling better.” (I’m not saying that’s what you’re saying, I am just saying in general.) The placebo effect results in changes in brain chemistry and hormone levels. It can be as effective, and more so, for some people, than analgesics, anti-depressants, and other drugs. For some disorders, placebos can be consistently more effective than “real” medications, and furthermore, placebos that are prescribed by friendly, attentive, caring (or at least pretending to care) doctors can be strikingly more effective than placebos alone.
Maybe Reiki doesn’t work like it claims it does, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work at all. What if it can help some patients via the placebo effect, and by fostering a positive and supportive patient-medical person relationship, then would it be a legitimate offering at a medical practice? I think it would be really interesting, in light of the placebo affect, and considering the psycho-social complexities involved in treating certain medical conditions, to see some proper studies about the effectiveness of Reiki - not to see if it really involves magical curative hand energy, but to see if it is an effective treatment option for certain medical conditions.
Weirder things have been tried in the past and found to be effective. Who’s to say whether or not Reiki really is an effective treatment (for whatever reasons) until they’ve done the proper comparative tests? (And not tests where a four year old and a Reiki practitioner square off and subjects try and see which was the real deal, I mean tests with Reiki vs. drugs, Reiki vs. placebo, for different conditions, in different populations, etc.)
tl;dr - It is possible for Reiki to be a huge, effective load of crap. We can’t really know until there have been proper tests.
Apparently Reiki cannot be tested in a double-blind study, due to its very nature. The only thing that can determine its effectiveness is whether the patient feels better or not. And if the answer is yes, then who’s to argue with it?
I’m reminded of the thing where just going to see a doctor can make you feel better, even if he or she doesn’t treat you at all. No one knows why that works, but apparently it’s measurable and real.
What exactly has been tested? That Reiki practitioners are using magical hand energy to cure people? Or the effectiveness of Reiki vs. accepted medical practices for specific medical conditions? If the latter, please cite.
Reiki is a bunch of malarkey, but you’re going to see a lot more of this sort of thing in the future. The pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, and the government have been chipping away at the professional status of doctors for years. A doctor used to be a professional who would give you treatments scientifically indicated to benefit you in the long term. Now doctors are just one type of “health care provider” supposed to dole out whatever pills and services the patient demands in this “consumer-driven” healthcare economy. If you think it’s OK for psychologists to write prescriptions, then you also have to accept that doctors are going to hypnotize you. Let the buyer beware.
People gotta make money, and if enough people are asking for Reiki it’d be stupid not to offer it. As long as she isn’t making you do it, and isn’t proselytizing about it, why worry about it? I get my nails done at a salon that offers BS weight treatments- that doesn’t really affect me. I’m just getting my nails done.
If your wife changes from a doctor she likes who does effective treatment only because Reiki is offered at the same location, the quacks won. Why let them push you are and make decisions for you like that?
Is this when they were performing lobotomies, prescribing mercury, or bleeding people with leeches? Don’t let the sunny nostalgia get the best of you.
That’s true. I very much believe in the healing power of the mind. However, when a practitioner of Reiki taught it to me at my school, she presented it as 100% legitimate. Now I don’t know if she believed what she was selling, but clearly she wanted US to believe it, and I resented that. And I would resent it if a doctor or therapist, or what have you tried to convince me that I was receiving healing energy from their hands. It’s insulting to my intelligence.
As a contrast, I loved the guided imagery section of our class - we would all lie on mats on the floor and listen to soothing music while a calm voice walked us through calming imagery. Lying there, thinking about walks on the beach and picnics in the woods did a lot to relax me, and I could very much see how a person in chronic pain could be soothed through distraction, loss of muscle tension, ect. That kind of mental healing, I could get behind. Being lied to/being asked to delude myself, not so much.
Sure, why not offer quackery as long as someone wants it? It’s not like being a physician has ethical boundaries. Give the marks what they want. :rolleyes:
I believe Hyperelastic is referring to 20th-21st century evidence-based medicine.
It is an all-too-typical dodge of woo enthusiasts when their nonsense is challenged: “Well, medicine was wrong before!” It was, but it has learned from its mistakes. It’d be a shame to return to the days of quackery. Unfortunately, some physician practices (and more shameful, a number of medical school-based practices) have adopted reiki and other woo - largely, one suspects, because it’s too lucrative a field to ignore and besides, they’ll look warm and fuzzy to potential patients who don’t know any better.
I’d avoid a practice offering reiki (or homeopathy, ear candling or whatever the woo du jour is) like the plague. It disrepects the patient when you’re promoting remedies that lack an evidentiary basis, and/or suggests that the practitioners are ignorant and sloppy.
