One of the challenges in naturopathic medicine is treating every person individually. This entails pulling together treatment ideas and prescribed changes from a host of resources and, in some respects, I often feel like I am reinventing the wheel with each patient. For the clinician, this is a recipe for a lot of work and at the end of the day, it can be difficult to separate the "office" from home life as the realization of this responsibility sets in.
This is a sharp contrast to conventional medicine which has an established algorithm or standard of care for most medical diagnoses. I can't say for sure, but, when an MD leaves the office, it might possibly be easier for them to believe that they have done all they were trained to do for their patients and no one could expect more of them.
And, the conventional treatment protocols do seem to work for a percentage of the population. However, the majority of patients that come to naturopathic medicine have not been successfully treated with conventional approaches and they are in need of something to address the root of their problems. At times I wish there were more standards of care algorithms for ND's but, then I also hope that as our medicine continues to be supported by science that practitioners never utilize a canned approach.
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