navigating the healthcare system - the brains framework

I am deeply grateful for modern medicine and the current system has some serious flaws and issues.

I find this to be true in most circumstances — doctor’s and nurses are doing what they have been trained to do! Prescribe medications based on the symptoms presenting themselves.

The hardest thing for me to wrap my head around is that my experience has been that most conventional providers completely disregard the importance of food, sleep, community, and day to day life when it comes to health. There is also little to no recognition that nature designed our bodies to be healthy and balanced given the right environment, and the body has an ability to heal and regenerate itself under those conditions. For these reasons, our family has started to work with functional medicine practitioners as of late. While not perfect and a significant cost investment, it feels like a step in the right direction for us.

Tricky conversations and situations with providers come up often during pregnancy and birth. The brokenness of this relationship is a root cause of so many other issues that manifest themselves with more intervention and harmful power dynamics.

A helpful and simple framework that can be used to help navigate conversations is below (and taught in the HypnoBirthing curriculum). My husband and I even used this recently when dealing with a tricky situation with our vet and it was so helpful to ask questions that yielded more details and information that then helped us to make an informed decision about next steps.

The BRAINS Framework:

B: What are the benefits?

R: What are the risks?

A: What are the alternatives? (I especially love this one because when it comes to health, there is rarely only one “right” answer)

I: Pause for a gut check! What does your intuition say? (Yes, our intuition is a real and wildly important tool.)

N: What if we do nothing?

S: We’d like space to consider.

Remember, any healthcare provider is supposed to be providing a service to you. They should be partners and well aware you are on the same team! Use your voice (and BRAINS!).