Health Ownership

Culturally, America has become a society that avoids responsibility of the individual. Think of the countless frivolous law suits in our recent past: 1. McDonald’s coffee was too hot resulting in the warning now on all cups — “Contents are hot”. 2. Doctors being sued for delay of diagnosis due to patients not completing ordered medical tests and subsequent negative outcomes like cancer or death. You can likely name some more. 

The osteopathic medical philosophy recognizes that the body has self-healing and self-regulating systems and that the patient is the owner of these systems as well as the health within. It is their body, it is their health to manage. 

Modern medicine has robbed the patient of their responsibility for their own health. It seems society wants to place responsibility on anyone but the person who actually has the responsibility. A problem arises when this happens. If the patient really owns their health, then pretending the physician owns it instead limits any real healing from occurring. The person who has the power to do something about the situation, is not the person who has the responsibility to do it. This illusion of responsibility creates a glass ceiling to optimized health and can lead to blaming the physician for not making the patient better. 

At Trinity Institute, we are committed to partnering with our patients to optimize their health. Our patients are responsible for owning their health and actively participating in the treatment plan We, as clinicians, are responsible for being competent in our knowledge, compassionate in our care and people of godly character. Both parties are responsible to hold the other accountable for their respective actions. A clinical relationship made up of a responsible patient and a responsible clinician is the only possible way optimized health can occur. This is the kind of optimized care we would like as a patient and it’s the kind of care we offer to our patients. 

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