Salus Health Care Forum: Collaborative Conversations

Four Cultures of Health Care?

In this section of the forum, we will begin to describe core dynamics that may lie at the heart of health care.  We will present a model (The Four Cultures of Health Care) which provides a potential framework for understanding the complexities of contemporary health care systems, and perhaps generates new ideas about how we can come together to heal the people and the system of which we are all a part. To begin this discovery process, we start with what lies at the core of health care: anxiety.

Anxiety and Health Care

We go on to identify four cultures that we believe emerge in response to the anxiety and operate in contemporary health care systems. The first of these cultures is professionally oriented. Here is a description of this culture and its historical roots:

The Professional Culture

Health Care, Leadership and Coaching

Health Care and Leadership

What role should physicians play as leaders in contemporary health care systems? We offer links to a series of essays concerning this question. The first set of essays concern the appropriate style(s) of leadership that should be engaged by physicians:

Physician as Leader: 3 Fundamental Styles

Physician as Leader: 4 Blended Styles

Health Care and Coaching

Can mid-21st Century health care benefit from a dose of psychology and behavioral medicine? Is there a place for health-based coaching in contemporary health care institution? We proposed that the health-based coach can assist their client to bridge the gap between and integrate several different disciplines: psychology, biology, environmental studies, neurobiology and spirituality. Together, these interwoven disciplines provide what might best be called a biopsychosocial perspective on health.

Health-Based Coaching and a Biopsychosocial Perspective