The IMCO Scheme as a Tool in Developing Team-Based Treatment for People with Multiple Sclerosis

Abstract

The IMCO schemes have been an important tool in developing the team-based treatment approaches and to facilitate self-reflection on the professional role as a health care provider. We assume that the IMCO scheme will be of real value in the development of effective treatment based on collaboration between conventional and alternative practitioners.

People with multiple sclerosis in Denmark who use complementary and alternative medicine—Do subgroups of patients differ?

“…It was based on data from the before-mentioned large Danish research project by The Danish MS Society that took place between 2004 and 2010 and investigated treatment collaboration between conventional and complementary practitioners [38][39][40][41][42]. A questionnaire was developed, tested and validated by use of cognitive interviews as well as assessments from an expert group of neurologists [43].…”

Measuring the Development of Integrative Care Communication Patterns and Cross-Disciplinary Knowledge at a University Clinic: A Baseline Cross-Sectional Study

“…[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] For example, Kemper et al 2 surveyed physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants at a tertiary-care clinic and found these traditional-medicine practitioners specifically requesting integrative care for pain management, nutritional assessment and advice, healthy lifestyle advise for obesity, exercise and fitness, lifestyle promotion for diabetes, comprehensive stress management and healthy lifestyle promotion for cardiovascular health, headache management, cancer support, and pharmacy support for herbs and dietary supplements. Their findings "support suggestions that as the field rapidly evolves, changes in terminology are needed to more accurately reflect specific services, rather than lumping groups of therapies under heterogeneous terms such as CAM (complementary and alternative medicine)."…”

Types of treatment collaboration between conventional and alternative practitioners – results from a research project at a Danish MS hospital

“…The problem of mono-professionalism came to the fore in particular in connection with defining and discussing several basic healthcare concepts such as ‘outcome’, ‘documentation’, ‘improvement’, ‘ill’, ‘healthy’, and ‘diagnosis’, which led to a clash of various perceptions and understandings among practitioners [4, 26, 27, 42–46]. At the same time, the alternative practitioners pointed out that during the project, doctors were more open than expected, which made a positive contribution to collaboration.…”