Defying Prognosis – How Integrative Oncology can teach us more about Health and the Meaning of Life

Dr Thompson trained in Medicine at the University of Oxford and Guy’s Hospital in London. Whilst training in Palliative Medicine to Consultant level, she also studied a range of integrative approaches, setting up an Integrative Cancer Care service at the University Hospital in Bristol. In 2014 she set up the National Centre for Integrative Medicine (NCIM) and stepped away from the NHS in 2019 to run NCIM full-time. She is passionate about supporting a transformation in healthcare towards a wellness and empowerment model that combines conventional, lifestyle, functional and holistic approaches to support health and wellbeing. As well as being Academic Director, overseeing programme delivery and teaching on NCIM’s accredited 2–3-year master’s Level 7 Diploma in Integrative Healthcare for healthcare professionals, she practices as an Integrative Doctor, supporting patients with a range of approaches, including Mistletoe Therapy.  She has expertise in integrative cancer care and special interests in women’s health including supporting women with the side effects of breast cancer treatments. Dr Thompson is a council member of the British Society of Integrative Oncology, and has been past President for the European Congress for Integrative Medicine and the Integrative and Personalised Medicine Congress. Along with her Membership of the Royal College of Physicians, she also has a Doctor of Medicine Thesis from the University of Oxford, focusing on complex trial design and understanding placebo responses when investigating complementary approaches.

Robin Daly founded the charity Yes to Life in response to
the immense difficulties he faced in finding authentic,
appropriate and available complementary and lifestyle
treatments for his daughter Bryony, when she was
facing cancer for the third time, aged twenty-two.
Cancer is one of the most complex conditions and is
fraught with contradictions and disagreements in even
the most fundamental areas, such as causes and
mechanisms. In order to make intelligent decisions, one
has to become a minor expert, and in this field that is a
very tall order. And then, even when you find
approaches that may help you with your particular
cancer, at your particular stage, as well as a practitioner
who offers them in a location you are able to reach,
there is still the matter of paying for what is uniformly
private medicine.
So essentially people need help - they need help in
finding a shortcut to the most promising avenues, and
some need help with funding. Above all, they needed a
positive, supportive response to their difficulties. What
was needed was a charity with no agenda other than to
help people to build their own integrative programme -
using the best on offer from both orthodox medicine
and a broad range of other approaches - and then to
support them in implementing it. So Robin established
Yes to Life in 2005 as the first charity offering direct
support to anyone with cancer in the UK looking for
ways to help their own recovery.