Integrative care--product and process: considering the three T's of timing, type and tuning

In the biomedical model of care, practitioners are familiar with the focus of service being the product or outcome. Integrative care is an ongoing creative process where patients and health practitioners work together to bring about healing for the patient by carefully choosing and using biomedical and complementary therapies. How complementary and biomedical therapies are united to meet the special needs of the patient is an important part of the process and is often overlooked. The three T's, timing, type, and tuning are parts of the integrative process. Integrative care as a spiritual process must demonstrate not only the masculine qualities of health care such as producing the name of the condition and the remedy. It must also demonstrate the feminine qualities of the process, the "how" of healing.