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The ‘Douglas-Mort practice
If you need help and advice or want to get in touch with us please phone 01297 639191 and leave a message giving your mobile number please and we will do our best to get back to you
IMPORTANT
If you have just arrived here by redirection from our old website at ‘honitonosteopaths.co.uk’ we wish to inform you that we have retired as osteopaths. However we are utilising all of our 49years of training skill and experience developed whilst osteopaths and are continuing to offer help and advice as wholistic health care practitioners. Our practice ethos and high standards of care remain unchanged .
Whilst running the Honiton Osteopathic centre and laterly THE DOUGLAS-MORT PRACTICE’ we were the longest established practice in Devon and the West Country with specialists in a particularly gentle and useful approach derived from the studies of WG Sutherland, this is sometimes called the cranial approach or cranio-sacral therapy.
As Sutherland Practitioners who follow the work of WG Sutherland and his forbear AT Still, principals DAVID and ROWAN DOUGLAS-MORT each have over 49 yrs of clinical experience in these skills, and currently lecture and tutor on post-graduate courses in colleges of osteopathy both in the the UK and in Europe.
Our special approach to treatment at the Douglas-Mort Practice as Sutherland Cranial Practitioners is where we utilised the cranio-sacral approach. As we have not used any heavy or forceful manipulative techniques. We believe that our approach greatly enhances the safety, benefit, and the relaxing qualities of treatment for patients.
Our gentle approach is suitable for people of all ages and all stages of life, from tiny babies to senior citizens.
Stop Press. Please see important message below. [A.S.A. regulations]
Currently due to unfortunate recent antagonism towards complementary medicine in some quarters, the Advertising Standards Authority [ASA] now requires that our website information only lists us as being able to help patients suffering from the complaints for which there is existing high level research or gold standard proof, [i.e double blind trials] that manual therapy is efficacious.
This poses a problem for cranio-sacral and wholistic therapies as double blind research trials usually require in the order of £800,000. and usually considerably more to fund each individual trial, and the requirements of double blind trials are frequently unsuited technically and ethically to a ‘patient centred’ individually tailored approach. Another concern arises from the recent doubts voiced in the scientific world about the reproducibility, and hence ultimate strength of validity of ‘double blind’ trials within the field of drug therapy, medicine and biology.
Biological systems are sensitive, and human beings even more so; as an example, drug reactions and interactions between drugs can be very variable and not always predictable from one person to another. Placebo and other effects which confound research, are also recently becoming recognised as an inherent difficulty found even in double-blind trials… hands on treatment is essentially a ‘drug free’ therapy and does not rely on the use of prescription drugs in the treatment of patients. As Sutherland practitioners we work alongside other health professionals and other treatment modalities where necessary. Emphatically our focus is ALWAYS to support a very high quality of patient care.
[As a side note: All practitioners in this practice are fully compliant with state regulations, continuing professional development/updating, and carry full insurance for treating both people and animals.] Regarding funding for suitable research into manual therapies, this is a problem. As there is currently no government funding for such research, and sadly the drug companies would not be interested in funding research into drug free treatments, we currently have no outside financing for our research.This means that funding has of necessity to come from the professionals themselves, so costs have to be kept to reasonable levels.
However, whilst we do not have ‘double blind’ research evidence regarding many conditions that our patients say that we have successfully helped them with, we as responsible practitioners are gathering a growing body of case studies, qualitative research studies, practice audits, testimonials, and affirmations that cranio-sacral approach to treatment has been highly beneficial in many other conditions that we may not mention here. Practitioners are doing their very best to progress responsibly with research despite an environment that is not helpful to these endeavours.
IMPORTANT MESSAGES
The contents of this website is EMPHATICALLY NOT INTENDED TO CLAIM THAT WE ‘CURED’ ANY CONDITIONS WHATSOEVER Any patient observations, anecdotal and historical narratives are only included as an interesting history of wholistic therapies, and our experiences drawn from our 49 years in practice and teaching in this field. We are sharing a story, that is all.
COMPLAINTS PROCEDURES:
In order to be compliant with the latest GDPR regulations we have a structured complaints procedure. Should you need to make a complaint then please contact us by letter at this address: Fawnsmoor farm, Lyme road, Axminster EX13 5SW. We will review your complaint and respond within 30 days.
Historically osteopathy and Sutherland’s cranial sacral approach which was derived from osteopathy, has been in existence as a treatment able to help many conditions and has been well respected for this by growing numbers of people since 1874. By the time physiotherapy came into being in 1895 the osteopathic colleges were already producing graduate osteopaths by the hundreds.
Due to our endeavours to comply with ASA regulations we are very limited as to the information that we may provide via our website. If you have a query about SUTHERLANDS cranial sacral approach that we are unable to cover in these web pages, or need advice regarding a problem please phone us on 01297 639191 (leave your name and mobile phone number and we will do our best to help)