An Integrative Day Care Clinic for chronically ill patients: Concept and case presentation

Introduction: Chronic diseases are one of the biggest challenges for future medicine. Empowering patients to adopt a health promoting lifestyle and to learn effective coping strategies seems essential for successful therapy. Integrative medicine might provide such strategies to promote healthy lifestyle changes by means of Mind/Body therapies. Concept: The Department for Internal and Integrative Medicine at Kliniken Essen-Mitte, academic teaching Hospital of the University Duisburg-Essen, offers an Integrative Day Care Clinic with the focus on lifestyle management as part of standard care. The program utilizes Mind/Body therapies and components from cognitive therapy to increase patient's coping. Case reports: Three cases, attending the Integrative Day Care Clinic, are presented here. Cases reveal that the Integrative Day Care Clinic may be effective for all patients who do contribute to the program and make necessary lifestyle changes. The most frequently reported changes do not concern symptom severity, but acceptance, coping and self-efficacy, especially in stressful situations. Satisfaction with the therapy is high. Conclusion: An Integrative Day Care Clinic group program appears to indicate positive effects for patients with chronic diseases. These results are supported by the results of several randomized controlled trials in patients with chronic diseases. Further superior quality trials and qualitative approaches are necessary to provide reliable results and more insight into the nature of the effects. (C) 2012 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.