The Nurse and Midwifery Organisation of Ljubljana has a long tradition of learning about various complementary methods in healthcare treatment and rehabilitation. Due to the interest of patients and desire of our members to learn about methods used by individuals in addition to their treatment the Nurse and Midwifery Organisation of Ljubljana organized a symposium entitled “Learning about Complementary and Natural Medicine in Nursing Care” in 2002. It was accompanied by a comprehensive publication. Two other symposia on the same topic were organised by popular demand. This was the beginning of an organised monitoring of novelties and current events in the field of complementary and natural medicine. Those who provided the services in the field of complementary medicine at that time also actively participated in the preparation of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Act at the Ministry of Health.
We are aware that many of our patients we meet in our everyday work use different methods of natural remedies and complementary medicine; that is why, there is an even greater need for nurses to become familiar with these alternative treatment methods.
Our members are informed about the various complementary treatment methods in order to learn about the beneficial and exclusionary effects of these on the psychophysical state of the users.
We work with everyone who is in favour of quality of life, health and do-no-harm principle that is aimed at both the patients and healthcare professionals. In to learn more about this topic we carefully choose those methods that do not exclude official medicine.