Is Non-Traditional Program A Valid Educational Program?
Broad-minded Educators who has long discovered its validity as an instrument or tool of learning, has only succesfully implemented the Non-Traditional concepts, particularly in last two decades among top Universities in the country, we now have the ETEEAP, the Open University Program, Distance Education, the list goes on....But in Medicine?, IBMS-IMSIM is pioneering this NON-Trad program in Naturopathic/Integrative Medicine. While USA and Europe is a long way ahead of us, in the Philippines we are still blazing the trail, and bringing this field of Medicine in the frontiers of medical science and practice.
It is important for all Naturopathic and Integrative Medical students to have a profession in the health field or allied health prior to coming at IBMS-IMSIM, however those coming from diferent fields are also welcome to study as long as they have a profession and a Bachelor's degree to commence with, while a full Master's degree is preferable.
Is Non-Trad program Valid? let take a look at the case of renowned Master-Surgeon of The John Hopkins University, School of Medicine and Medical Center. While Medicine is a tough accomplishment in Distance Education plus requiring clinical exposures to the student, but still it can be done. Paramedics in the battle field, called "docs", an even nurses in the military learned even learned to operate through military experience. These ranks of paramedics are now the Physician Assistants in the USA and other parts of the world.They work in hospitals team up with medical doctors. What about in Naturopathic education (not necessarily surgery), can it be done?
The life of Vivien Thomas is an inspiring story of an African-American pioneer who overcame the barriers imposed by a segregated society. With no formal medical training, he developed techniques and tools that would lead to today's modern heart surgery. In operating rooms all over the world, great surgeons who received their training from Vivien Thomas are performing life-saving surgical procedures.
VIVIEN THOMAS, AFRICAN-AMERICAN SURGEON OF JOHN HOPKINS
Vivien T. Thomas was born in New Iberia, Louisiana on August 29, 1910. His family later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he was educated in the public schools. In 1929, after working as an orderly in a private infirmary to raise money for college, he enrolled as a premedical student at Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial College. The bank crash that year wiped out his life's savings, forcing him to drop out of school.
In 1930, he took a position at Vanderbilt University as a laboratory assistant with Alfred Blalock. Thomas' abilities as a surgical assistant and research associate were of the highest quality, and when Blalock moved to Johns Hopkins in 1941 he asked Thomas to accompany him. Thomas joined Blalock's surgical team and helped to develop the procedure used in the "blue baby" operation. He helped train many of the surgeons at Johns Hopkins in the delicate techniques necessary for heart and lung operations.
Thomas was a member of the medical school faculty from 1976 until 1985 and was presented with the degree of Honorary Doctor of Laws by the Johns Hopkins University in 1976. Today, in operating rooms all over the world, there are great surgeons performing life saving surgical procedures who received their training from Vivien Thomas. His achievements stand as a testament to the power of research, discovery, and persistence to improve the health of generations to come, a legacy we honor with the naming of the Vivien Thomas High Summer Research Program at Morehouse School of Medicine.
The History of Heart Medicine at Johns Hopkins
In 1944 doctors at Johns Hopkins performed the surgery that opened the door to today's heart surgery.Working together, The Johns Hopkins Hospital's chief surgeon, Dr. Alfred Blalock, his technician Vivien Thomas, and pediatric cardiologist Dr. Helen Taussig devised a means for improving the flow of oxygen into the blood by connecting one of the heart's major arteries with another feeding into the lungs. Known as the Blue Baby Operation, it brought relief to a young girl plagued with a combination of heart defects that kept her blood so starved for oxygen that her skin was literally blue. In time the procedure not only helped save the lives of thousands of similarly afflicted children around the world, but also opened the door to now-familiar procedures like coronary bypass surgery.
In the 1950s doctors and scientists at Hopkins.developed the first cardiac defibrillator as well as cardiopulmonary resuscitation or CPR. While defibrillators today with their metal paddles are a familiar feature of hospital emergency rooms and ambulances almost everywhere, CPR has been credited with saving hundreds of thousands of lives. In the 1970s researchers at Hopkins helped refine pacemaker technology when they invented the first implantable device that could actually be recharged inside the body. A decade later they developed the first implantable defibrillator to help those with unpredictable and potentially fatal irregularities in their heartbeat. Known today as an ICD, the tiny devices have been credited with saving thousands of lives.
Over that same time period other research at Hopkins helped improve the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease by working not just outside the heart, but inside it as well. Small probes that could be threaded through veins and arteries gave heart doctors a way to actually look and work inside the heart, making a whole range of new diagnoses and new treatments possible. Known as cardiac catheterization, the technique created a new field in cardiology known today as interventional radiology.