My Week with Dr. Andre Saine
Spending 20 hours with Dr. Saine just isn’t enough! Observing Andre as he takes cases has been an amazing experience for me as a developing homeopath. The questions are always open-ended, well-formed and thorough, and Dr. Saine’s decades of clinical experience are vividly clear.
I have to say that what I learned just this week through observation, was more valuable than spending the last quarter in clinic as a secondary student working directly with patients! Watching homeopaths that really know what they are doing is something all students new to homeopathy should experience. I learned so much about how to take a case. I saw Andre go through the symptoms the patient reported on the initial intake and follow-up on each of them. If a patient mentioned they had been irritable, he would ask how has the irritability been since you’ve taken the remedy. Instead of asking the long drawn out question to ddx nat mur, how long could you sit in the sun on a park bench with no hat, no sunglasses in 80 degree heat, he would simply ask, how are you in the sun?
Watching Dr. Saine listen to patients was also interesting. In the Medical Observer, we read about how important it is to carefully listen to be able to catch the moment when your patient says something important. Dr. Saine really demonstrated how that was done. I could tell when he was differentiating between remedies as well. His questions would bounce back and forth between characteristic symptoms of a few remedies as he tried to narrow it down. It really showed me how valuable a strong understanding of material medica really is. Watching him use MacRep also made me regret my decision to buy Radar. MacRep is so much simpler to use. He would use something like EH on Radar continually to read the reporting’s of old doctors cases to see if something was comparable to his current case. It was also really interesting to see how patients who were sensitive to remedies were prescribed doses. I never knew that Hahnemann had recommended that sensitive patients smell the remedy, or take it via olfaction, as Hahnemann put it. It was amazing to hear these patients describe how much of an effect such a small dose had.
After this week with Dr. Saine, and my last few weeks with Dr. Kellerstein, my passion for homeopathy is stronger than ever and I am excited to get back to school to start applying what I have learned. I would recommend preceptoring with both of these amazing doctors to all students interested in learning homeopathy the way Hahnemann had originally practiced it.
