The Role of Massage Therapy in Integrative Health Care

Massage therapy's role in integrative health care has become widely accepted in major hospitals and in daily medical practice.

With health care, incorporating more parts of the whole and learning from people who touch the various other parts can provide massage therapists with greater insight and perspective, and allows them to make more informed clinical decisions. As a massage therapist, your clients rely on you to provide some perspective on their well-being.

Integrative health care expands your potential to do that, exponentially.

Integrative health is emerging as an innovative strategy to increase patient satisfaction, decrease frequency/length of stay, increase patient resilience, and reduce many of the common complaints associated with hospitalizations, such as pain, stress, anxiety, nausea/vomiting, constipation and trouble sleeping.

Each massage therapist brings their unique training and point of view, their perspectives on health and healing, and their own ability to deeply connect with their patients. People seek your care because they know you will treat them with respect, take a team approach whenever needed, and meet them where they are.

The benefits of integrative health services in the acute care setting can result in significant cost savings for hospitals and insurance companies. As a result, integrative health is being explored as a core initiative, mission and model of care in some of the nation’s top healthcare organizations.

Integrative health care is at the heart of what you do. It is of utmost importance to build trusting relationships with other excellent practitioners, so that when you make referrals, the patient finds a similarly open-minded and kind-hearted practitioner on the other end. Your professional networking is everything, and, as a massage therapist, it is a constantly evolving aspect of what you do.