Needles, Relationships, and Healing
— Tate Kauffman, MD, DABMA, AAMA Board of Directors
Absolutely everything about the manufacture of homemade black raspberry jelly is an ordeal. Black raspberry canes object to tidy rows, preferring sunny embankments and the edges of brushy clearings where they cohabit with poison ivy, ticks, and chiggers, all of which are in their glory when the berries ripen in mid-summer. Then there are the thorns, of course. Once harvested, the fruit must be juiced to separate the goodness from the countless tiny seeds, leaving the kitchen, often as not, looking like the scene of a violent crime. Assuming that this process goes well and the jelly sets properly, the result is a shockingly small yield from a mountain of hard-won berries. Knowing all of this made my acupuncture patient’s gift of a gorgeous, paraffin-sealed quarter-pint of jelly all the more remarkable.
To be clear, I do not expect gifts from patients and the important thing is not the jelly, delicious as it was, but rather the type of relationship with patients that may occasionally be marked by such things as canned goods or some asparagus spears plucked fresh from the garden. Like many of us, I trained and began to practice primary care in a time and place in which doctors knew their patients and patients knew their doctors. We knew about their families, about what filled their days, about their joys and tribulations. We discussed these things during office visits, and they were not trivial asides; I gleaned a great deal of medically-relevant information from inquiries into grandchildren, pets, or hobbies, information not obtainable from standardized risk assessments or online pre-visit questionnaires. Our relationships with patients were not peripheral to the excellent care that we provided, but an integral part of that care and were not, at that time, considered “alternative” but simply “good” medicine.
We now live in a different time, of course. It turns out that I don’t fit well in a world of EHR checkboxes and quick, corners-cut visits. As I struggled to find my place in Western medicine, I saw the job for which I had worked hard and made many sacrifices slipping away. What replaced it, while perhaps financially rewarding, left me feeling empty and ashamed. I was not able to do the job that I loved in the way that I had been taught that it should be done. I suspect that many, probably most, of you have similar stories. The fact that you are reading this newsletter suggests that you may have found similar solutions as well.
Medicine is in a strange and unfortunate place, but in this chaos are opportunities. Doctors and patients are desperate for something different, and some will find that in medical acupuncture, including some who have yet to consider needling or being needled. We, the AAMA, are uniquely positioned to educate our colleagues and the general public. We need to educate them about the science of course, because that is real and important, but also about the space that can and has been created to reclaim some other important things in medicine, like talking, and listening, and real treatment relationships, things that our Western system seems to have forgotten. We haven’t forgotten, nor have our patients, and Eastern medicine has always remembered.
Medical acupuncture can be so much more than an additional tool in the toolbox. For good and dedicated but frustrated physicians it can be a way out of the dysfunction and a path back to what works, a reminder of why they chose this career. We can help them find this path and keep them in clinical medicine, where they are sorely needed, and in so doing can make our organization stronger. We can help patients find the care that they aren’t finding elsewhere and the relationships that they miss. We can do this through outreach and education, both formal and informal, as an organization but also as individual physician acupuncturists. We need to talk (and think) about more than just the needles, because when we do our jobs correctly, there is so much more than just the needles.
These strange times can be our moment. 2024 can be a year of growth for medical acupuncture and for the AAMA. I hope that the year brings more doctors to our field and satisfaction back to their professional lives. I hope that it brings more patients to the care that they need. In each of your practices, I hope that it brings peace, healing, and possibly a jar of jelly. Thank you all for helping to make this community what it is.
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