Doctor moves beyond ‘fixing the broken piece’

Above is a story of a physician who completed the Associate Fellowship with Dr. Andrew Weil.

For me, I had a unique experience of being able to complete two fellowships with Dr. Andrew Weil at University of Arizona's Program in Integrative Medicine. The first fellowship, the residential fellowship, is no longer available. The residential fellowship consisted of two years of hands-on training with Dr. Andrew Weil and other master teachers in his group. These teachers included nationally renown figures providing education for the next generation of physicians committed to empowering patients through a healing partnership exploring all options conventional and alternative in a mindful manner.

The unique advantage of the residential fellowship was that it provided me with an opportunity to work closely with Dr. Weil in person. These times included time spent in his clinic at University Medical Center learning medicine as well as times we hiked, gathered herbs, and cooked together as a group. It gave me a valuable insights.

During the fellowship, I was awarded with Osher Fellowship. Osher is a philantropist who created the University of California San Francisco's Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. One of the other opportunities which presented to myself was the Associate Fellowship described in the article. Compared to the residential fellowship, it was not as much hands on. However, it provided a valuable asset in the form of community. Also it expanded the number of graduates of the University of Arizona allowing them to provide the training to more people (about 50 per year rather than 4 per year of the residential fellowship). It also provides a self-sustaining way for the program to offer the valuable program to physicians.

I feel very fortunate to have had the training and I also feel extremely grateful that I am now in a community supporting this type of medicine.