Belfast nurse Sharon Campbell leads a double life – she is also an acupuncturist.
The registered general nurse also offers acupuncture treatments at a healthcare clinic in the city. "I am a nurse as well as an acupuncturist, so I see both sides", she said. "Western medicine is absolutely fantastic in general but it doesn’t work for everything. Take somebody with chronic pain and a heart problem, they could try acupuncture to keep their pain under control. It is used a lot in pain clinics and it is used a lot for chemotherapy, so it's already in use for the NHS at the minute. I just hope acupuncture gets used for a lot more things because it is good for a wide spectrum of things".
Acupuncture is a system of healing which has been practised in China for thousands of years. Traditionally it is part of a holistic approach to the management of disease and maintenance of health. Sharon explained: "Acupuncture is the insertion of hair-fine needles in specific points of the body and these points are use to help the body heal itself. "They can help by releasing endorphins around the body, which are the bodies natural pain killers. It can also help by manipulating the body which is great for anxiety, stress and depression. Acupuncture is also very good for the general maintenance of the body by making sure its energy is at the right level. It is also very good for manipulating hormones which can be used for a lot of female disorders".
Sharon treats a wide range of patients with varying ailments and conditions.
She said: "I saw a young girl who came to me with anxiety before exams and she found she was able to get through them without a high level of anxiety. A lady came to see me with an arthritic knee. She had a bad medical history and was too unwell to go for surgery. So she was going to be left with the pain because she couldn’t take medication because of a heart problem, she was just stuck. She came to me for acupuncture and it really worked for her, it helped her manage her pain and she said she would be happy if she could maintain it like that for the rest of her life. Sharon continues, "acupuncture also works for back pain as well. A patient of mine lived with back pain for years and again the treatment was really useful for him. He was able to come off his medication. One lady came to me with sinus problems and the treatment cured her sleeping problem because the acupuncture helped with her sleep.
In her experience Sharon has found a lot of people can't afford the treatments so pilots like Get Well UK can really make a difference to patient care in Northern Ireland. "I found a lot of people couldn’t afford to see me privately and the patients who were coming to see me had very chronic conditions", she said. “If people with these conditions have only had them for a few months, they can probably be cleared after a few sessions. The longer you have a condition the longer it can take to heal, normally about five or six treatments. With the NHS people were able to come for six treatments and really see an improvement. For people who couldn’t afford it, for the GP to know the practitioner was reputable, I think that is also important. Otherwise you are just looking down the Yellow Pages and hoping, because it is very, very difficult to find someone that is reputable. I think just the fact that we are in the same business as GPs, it is comforting for the patients to know it is part of the NHS".