A Grounded Theory Study of Homeopathic Practitioners' Perceptions and Experiences of the Homeopathic Consultation

Table 5

Category 4: responding therapeutically.

Subtheme	Examples
Responding through connecting	“I really connect with this patient and more importantly she seems to connect with me. I feel that this is really helpful in finding a good remedy for her, I think this is to do with our mutual understanding” (Diary 1)
Range of responses	“Sometimes it’s a remedy… sometimes your response is to watch and wait, sometimes its referral, sometimes its education, sometimes it’s you know naturopathic, you know, or nutritional” (Int 25)
Therapeutic consultation	“She always…yes says that she feels better after seeing me and talking. But it’s not just that it’s, I also think it’s that she feels heard really heard” (Int 12)
Benefit through connections	Patient “I noticed that tension makes it worse, its all through my body, its terrible…another connection is that when I eat food I shouldn’t eat like wheat…this makes me think about things in my life that I never actually thought before” (Ob 1)
Remedy has specific or symbolic power	“we give (the remedy) and say this has power…so its got, as well as any, you know, direct properties that the remedy itself might have on the body, it also has that very symbolic power that it stands for something” (Int 24)
Matching	“finding the right remedy, as we all know, is …is a very complicated task. And I do think that that makes it a sort of exquisite kind of pressure” (Int 24); “The symptoms bring up some possibilities and that will lead me to more questions so there’s a successive approximation that happens.” (Int 8); “So sometimes you are drawing on something else arenot you to choose a remedy and it probably is the um intuition in a way” (Int 2); “I am very conscious of just how the patient makes me feel, so you know If I am starting to feel lethargic and increasingly I realise that I am picking this up from the patient and that’s another clue to the remedy” (Int 20)
Adjunct therapies	“There’s a chiropractor in our clinic, aromatherapist, counselors, physiotherapists…. I’ve actually got quite a broad range or people to refer on to” (Int 10)