For those who find doctor visits unnecessarily stressful, the School of Medicine and its new partner might have just the remedy.
The Medical School has partnered with the Maryland-based Tai Sophia Institute to design a new curriculum in complementary and alternative medicine.
Tai Sophia, the nation's first accredited acupuncture school, is working with Penn on a master's program in medical techniques outside the mainstream for Penn medical students. The degree, which will be from Tai Sophia ? not Penn ? will recognize training in areas other than formal academics.
The catalog for the new program has courses ranging from an introduction to phytotherapy -- making medicine from plants -- to already existing Penn Medical School courses like Mindful Mediation.
"What happens when you meditate? What happens to your body when you eat certain foods?" asked Robert Duggan, president of Tai Sophia and co-director of the collaboration, indicating the direction of the degree program.
"The students will become very aware of how their day-today activities involve either stress or relaxation and how they're at the focal point of moderating it," he added.
The exact design of the program is not yet determined, but Duggan said students will likely take one course in complementary and alternative medicine per semester.
Then, in their fourth year, students would have the option to study at Tai Sophia during clinical rotations. Duggan expects 10 percent of the Medical School's upcoming fall class of about 140 students to opt into the program.
Tai Sophia is currently working to develop an Optimal Healing Environment for cardiology patients at Penn's Presbyterian Medical Center. For four years Tai Sophia has run a similar center with the Kennedy Krieger Children's Hospital in Baltimore.
The goal of the center would be to provide top-quality care in an atmosphere that is stress-free for both the patients and the staff.
"If the staff is not stressed out, but relaxed, our betting is that A: there will be fewer errors; and B: there will be greater staff retention, which is a big cost factor in a hospital," Duggan said.
For Alfred Fishman, director of the collaboration for Penn, the cardiology center indicates an ideological change regarding the function of doctors.
"We are turning from a preoccupation with preventing and curing disease to a new aspect, which is preserving wellness," Fishman said.
"The general notion that will come out of this is that people should take more responsibility for reducing stress," he added.
Tai Sophia and Penn will also work to create post-graduate programs to teach doctors whose patients are already taking herbal medicines.
According to the 2002 National Health Interview Survey, about 36 percent of Americans have tried complementary and alternative therapies. When vitamin use and prayer are included in the definition of complementary and alternative therapy, that figure rises to 62 percent.
Of the information these programs will provide, Fishman said, "It seems to me that because so much of the population is resorting to these therapies, somebody ought to at least offer help."
