Transcript: Michael W. Painter, M.D.
A traditional healing liaison facilitates communication between physicians and patients
- [Painter:]
- A unique aspect of this urban clinic, [is] that they have a traditional liaison. It’s important to understand that they can’t call him the traditional healer, because there are over 200 different tribal cultures represented at the clinic, and so he can’t be the healer for each one of those cultures, because he comes from his own culture. But it’s really important to understand that many, probably, if not most of your patients in that setting, you at least have to ask the question or wonder if they’re also accessing a traditional healer and what that might be like, and it’s important for physicians who are working in that to really get a sensibility about what is this healer doing, and ideally you’d have a partnership with him. So during the years I practiced there, I had a nice partnership with Carl where I would call him up and say, “I have Mrs. Jones here, and I’m seeing her for this, and I’m prescribing that, and this is our plan, but I talked to her today about if she was interested in seeing someone with a traditional perspective, and she very much is and could we set something like that up.” Something like that. So that kind of partnership, I think works really well to further craft the kind of culturally tailored care for these patients.