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Rania Habib, MD, DDS (Host): This is Expert Insights with the Carle Foundation Hospital. I'm your host, Dr. Rania Habib. Joining me today is Dr. Shamim Sadiq, a Board Certified Internal Medicine Physician who works in Hospital Medicine at the Carle Foundation Hospital and also serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor at Carle Illinois College of Medicine.

She is here to discuss the benefits of a holistic approach to medicine that coordinates the physical, emotional, spiritual, and social aspects of healing to optimize outcomes. Welcome, Dr. Sadiq. We are so excited to explore this holistic approach to medicine.

Shamim Sadiq, MD: Thank you so much, Dr. Habib. I'm excited too to talk about something that's very close to my heart.

Host: Sure. Now, I know you are very passionate about this topic. The holistic approach to medicine combines multiple main elements, and I would like to explore each of these on their own, and then let's discuss how they actually blend together. To begin, let's address the physical aspect of the ailments and how you provide the utmost care to your patients.

Shamim Sadiq, MD: Again, as a Hospitalist, I deal with mostly inpatient, hospitalized patients, which when patients come there, they are very ill, acutely ill, and taking care of physical aspect is the utmost necessity. So, optimizing whatever treatment options we have and making sure we're able to stabilize so that they can be discharged from the hospital and have a follow up with their primary care physician. So, depending on what the ailment is; taking care of their physical demands or needs in the hospital is our utmost priority.

Host: Absolutely. And just so our listeners understand, explain what you mean by the physical aspect so they can get a real good understanding of that.

Shamim Sadiq, MD: Just to explain in a layman's terminology, like lately there's been a COVID outbreak for several years. So people, when they come, the hospitalized patients that I take care of, they can have variety of physical illnesses from shortness of breath to acute respiratory failure or pneumonia or other comorbidities.

So when the patient comes to us, we're not just dealing with COVID as a virus. We're dealing with the symptoms and the signs that the person faces and our goal is to minimize them, treat them, and provide a preventive care when patients are discharged so that they can have a close follow up with their doctors and get healed in that process.

Host: That's perfect. So really focusing on the signs and symptoms, each individual, how they come together, and then wrapping that up and sending them to the primary for follow up to have that closed loop of care.

Shamim Sadiq, MD: That's correct.

Host: Perfect! So, the second element of holistic medicine is the emotional or psychological support. Since a lot of ailments have psychological factors that often make the ailments worse; how do you address these specifically?

Shamim Sadiq, MD: Absolutely. You know, besides the physical ailment, psychology has some element to do with aggravating our underlying problem. I personally feel that if we can address the psychological issues, during this hospitalized stay or even outpatient, we can at least minimize some aspect of the ailment. A lot of it that has to do with fear, uncertainty, not having certain answers or trying to explain things in layman's terminology.

All this adds up and helps in overcoming the fear, both with the patient and the family members that come to us and have a lot of concerns and fears. So to minimize fear, give them an optimistic approach towards what we are doing and making them hopeful, definitely is a plus plus for psychological treatment aspect. So that's how I feel it's important equally.

Host: Now, the focus really recently has been about mental health, and rightfully so, because we often forget that aspect. So, as a Hospitalist, do you feel comfortable treating that emotional, psychological aspect to their ailments, or are you often bringing in psychiatry or psychology to help?

Shamim Sadiq, MD: Depending on the severity of the illness and the underlying issues, sometimes, if there's fear involvement, uncertainty involvement, and it's within my capability and my expertise; I do provide that psychological support within my, but if I feel like the patients need more attention, that's beyond my expertise, like depression or things that need acute medical or psychiatric treatment. Yes, we do help. We do definitely involve psychiatrists and counselors and other social workers to get the right help to get the patient appropriate treatment at appropriate time.

Host: Your patients are very lucky to have you, that's fantastic.

Shamim Sadiq, MD: Thank you so much. Well, I love doing what I'm doing.

Host: Oh, you can tell. And we often don't see Hospitalists addressing that emotional and support, so it's really a wonderful benefit that you as the Hospitalist is going that extra mile to say, hey, let's incorporate all of these factors into your treatment.

Shamim Sadiq, MD: I'm a single mom, so it stems from my own compassion towards my daughter and seeing her growing up. You deal with their physical, psychological issues too, so you have to have that holistic approach of being compassionate. And if you incorporate the same psychology at workplace, you realize that, uh, I mean the problems are pretty much same throughout. You just, the approach towards patients may be a little different than what you do at home.

Host: Absolutely. It's so great to bring that into their treatment. The third element of holistic medicine is the spiritual aspect. How do you start this topic with your patients?

Shamim Sadiq, MD: For some, it's a sensitive topic. Some are just upfront about it. They believe in faith. They have, whatever faith they may have. I am a Muslim. For me, again, faith and belief in God is very important and I incorporate it the way I can. But I've noticed that there is a diversity of people. And you have to ask them if they are comfortable with the spiritual or they have, like most of the times what happens is when I'm at the hospital and the patient is sick, I ask them, do you want us to get the pastor involved to talk about? Many people will say, yes, please do, or others will say, no, we have our own belief system, we'd rather follow it. So what it does is that it helps them because they realize that I'm not just a physical body sitting in the hospital being treated for problem A, B, and C. They are approaching me as an individual who needs help with other issues too. So it is a, again, it indirectly is a psychological support to them and faith does move mountains to people who believe in it and a lot of patients can relate to it and they definitely agree and we get whatever possible help we can get them to help ease their fear and uncertainty. So I try to incorporate that.

Host: Now, does your hospital system have the different faith leaders from the major religions? So are you able to bring in someone who might be Jewish or Buddhist or different sects of Christianity? Do you guys have that available within the hospital system?

Shamim Sadiq, MD: We do have pastors in the hospital, but a lot of times, whatever social support we can provide them, or the spiritual support we can provide them, we do either give them the resources or ask them to talk to the people that they need to talk to and see if we can talk to them and help them process it together. So yes.

Host: That's fantastic. Now, moving on, our fourth element of holistic medicine is the social aspect. How do you address the social concerns that sometimes might be a barrier to care for patients?

Shamim Sadiq, MD: You know um, I personally feel social aspect is a very important factor in this whole holistic approach. After seeing what's been happening in past several years with the COVID, a lot of patients have suffered financially, emotionally, and some have been uninsured, some are not able to go to their doctors, some are non-compliant, some are fearful to go see their doctors.

So it just creates that social disequilibrium that people would like to seek help, but they either have financial, emotional support, or some other social elements that are missing. So when we get social support into the circle and we tell them that we will address your social needs and our case managers and social workers do an awesome job in reaching out to family or friends or whoever can help them get those things resolved. I think it eases again, their psyche and it helps in healing faster because many times what happens is we could take care of their physical ailment; they go home, they may be non-compliant with their meds, they can't afford their medications or they may have other social limitations that prevent them to get that utmost care and then they fall back into the same pit again and either end up getting hospitalized again or just you know, not being able to have that continuity of care. So, social aspect is equally important to provide the whole holistic approach in helping patients get the utmost care.

Host: It's wonderful that you employ this multidisciplinary approach the patient. So not only the holistic approach, but you're bringing in experts where you feel that the patient might need a little bit more help. Now that we've addressed the four main components of holistic medicine, how do you personally help coordinate all of these factors in the holistic way, Dr. Sadiq?

Shamim Sadiq, MD: As a Hospitalist, of course, we can't do it alone. We have a good support system of the nurses, the case managers, the pharmaceutical people, and we have what I call is multidisciplinary rounds, or what we call is whiteboard rounds, where we all gather together and talk about patient care, not just the physical, physical, emotional, psychological, and the social aspect, and try to address them all together and see where we can work as a team to address these issues and get the patient the right care or the right needs at that time.

Host: You have provided some wonderful insight into the benefits of a holistic approach to medicine, Dr. Sadiq. What are your final thoughts for our audience today?

Shamim Sadiq, MD: I would say we are in a profession that we are blessed to have this opportunity to take care of patients with compassion and compassion is my mantra. When we have compassion in mind, we just don't treat a patient. We treat a person, we treat an individual, and he or she may unfortunately come with the baggage of physical, emotional, spiritual, or social issues.

So we should not disregard them and completely take them into consideration so that when they go home, they if not all, most of their issues are addressed and help them with the continuity of care.

Host: Thank you so much. This was such a wonderful episode. You provided some wonderful insight for our patients today. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Shamim Sadiq, MD: My pleasure.

Host: So that was Dr. Shamim Sadiq, a Board Certified Internal Medicine Physician who works in Hospital Medicine at the Carle Foundation Hospital. For more information and to get connected with one of our providers, please visit carle.org, or for a listing of Carle providers and to view Carle sponsored educational activities, head on over to our website at carleconnect.com. I'm your host, Dr. Rania Habib. That wraps up this episode of Expert Insights with the Carle Foundation Hospital.