Page 10 - Final 10th Anniversary PDF For Printer

Our 10th Anniversary Women of Distinction

long time, which was that you could in the black. So, what took more time: non-traditional modalities, Dr.
not just treat the symptom without writing a prescription for medication Guarneri knew that she owed it to the
attacking the underlying problem. She or discussing the basics of nutrition medical profession, and particularly
said, “Certainly, as a cardiologist when and how it applies to the disease they to heart disease sufferers everywhere
you are faced with a patient suffering developed and what they would have to bring this education to the medical
from an acute event, such as a stroke to do to correct the problem? Dr. community. She and Rauni decided
or a heart attack, Conventional Med- Guarneri shares, "The minute that through their own experiences and
icine’s approach is the only way to go. became really clear to me, I realized those of Dr. Ornish --and others they
You need to get the patient to a trauma that it was necessary for us to teach followed, that it was time for them to
center like Scripps, Sharp, UCSD health providers differently. Not to say make a proposal to Scripps Hospital
and others where they are trained in that what we learned in school is bad, to create an innovative and ground-
critical care, and can immediately deal it is great for acute care, but we need a breaking program. Shortly thereafter,
with the current crisis.” Dr. Guarneri model that really embraces the best of with some generous benefactors and
felt that part of the problem was that acute care and then how do we prevent the blessings of Scripps, their dream
medical schools trained doctors in disease and get to underlying cause so became a reality, and Scripps Center
the acute care model, but little to no we can start to reverse the process." for Integrative Medicine was born.
emphasis was placed on training for Dr. Guarneri saw that a way to fix As the medical director of the center,
prevention of coronary disease. the system was to recognize that our Dr. Guarneri saw the importance of
One of the other issues which Dr. method of healing was not the only bringing education to physicians, as
Guarneri was witnessing more regu- way to improve the health of our pop- well as the public who were yearning
larly was that when a patient went to ulation. She explained, “Of course, we for something besides a prescrip-
a physician with a medical complaint prided our medical schools for teach- tion drug solution to every health
that resulted in a diagnosis such as ing our new doctors state of the art problem. The Scripps Center for
diabetes or high blood pressure, the heart technology which we knew was Integrative Medicine offered the best
answer was always the “ill to the pill” critical to our patients, but part of their of Conventional and Complementa-
approach. Each diagnosis resulted in a healing process might also include the ry Medicine. This is based upon the
prescription for medicine to treat the many wonders we could learn from belief that there exist many paths to
problem, with physicians not asking other global traditions. Conventional healing and that holistic health is a
the question ‘why does this patient Medicine is just one of many global cohesive balance of mind, body, and
have high blood pressure and what healing traditions. There is Traditional spirit. They recognized the wisdom of
can we do to reverse it?’ In defense Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic Medi- all healing traditions and incorporat-
of physicians, this was not a fault of cine from India and Homeopathy and ed them as appropriate into individu-
your doctor, but more the fault of the Naturopathic Medicine, which have alized care plans. Dr. Guarneri notes,
system, which required that a phy- their own healing properties.” “We realized one of the problems was
sician sees a minimum number of After seeing the amazing re- that physicians needed to be educated
patients per day for them to operate sults that could be achieved through in Integrative approaches. They need-

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