About Dr. Danilychev
Dr. Danilychev is originally from Moscow, Russia. In 1990 she immigrated with her parents to the United States, where she begun her college and university education. It was not an easy adjustment. Dr. Danilychev barely spoke any English when she came to America, and had to work full time during most of her undergraduate studies to support herself and her education. After this trial by fire with learning a new language, getting accustomed to a new culture, working and studying full time, Dr. Danilychev continued facing life's challenges by advancing her education at a medical school at Tel Aviv University in Israel.
After the remarkable learning and life experience of living in Israel, Dr. Danilychev returned to the United States for internal medicine residency training at NYU Downtown Hospital in New York City. A year later, during her training, she found herself being one of the first responders of the 9/11 tragedy, as the her hospital was just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. Helping many wounded, frightened, suffocating from the dust of the collapsed buildings patients, while living without electricity and running water and breathing the same toxic-smelling air for weeks and months, was undoubtedly a shocking and a life-changing experience for Dr. Danilychev.
While being interested in many subspecialties of medicine, Dr. Danilychev chose to continue her training in Geriatrics at UCLA. Training in Geriatric Medicine has proven to be invaluable; however, Dr. Danilychev continued feeling the gap in her training concerning pain, symptom management, and end of life care. Unfortunately, current medical training forces the physicians to see symptoms only as a way of finding a diagnosis and not something that deserves their full attention. Being discontent with this disconnect between the traditional split approach to disease and the person who is experiencing the suffering from the illness, Dr. Danilychev decided to continue her training in the field of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, an area of medicine that specifically focuses on symptom management, area of medical education that has been traditionally missing or minimal at best even at the top educational and training centers in America.
Getting training in Hospice and Palliative Medicine, was literally eye-opening for Dr. Danilychev. It was simply remarkable to suddenly see medical Care in a different light, to suddenly recognize patients' suffering, to see and hear their needs, to be able to address those needs without having a traditional doctor's agenda and approach of 'I am a doctor, I know everything, take this and call me in the morning. Next!' While helping hundreds of hospice patients and their families, making their lives better and often longer (patients live longer when their symptoms are well-controlled), Dr. Danilychev could also recognize that in spite of the fact that her patients saw dramatic symptom improvement with treatment provided by palliative doctors comparing to the standard hospital based symptom management, the unfortunate fact remained, that the non-palliative-trained doctors often would not follow palliative recommendations.
Unfortunately, many doctors are missing such a significant part of the essential symptom management knowledge, that it was practically impossible to communicate with them in a way that they could actually accept this treatment approach so foreign to them. The main reason for this, was the fact that medical school and residency programs devote little or no time to symptom management training. In addition, most of palliative medicine as we know it today, has developed through experience of hundreds and thousands of doctors and other healthcare providers, but unfortunately very little clinical research has been done in palliative medicine, making its effective daily practice remain unproven in the eyes of other doctors.
Over the last few decades, doctors have been trained to only accept 'advice' that has been demonstrated to be effective by randomized controlled trials. Experience with hundreds or thousands of cases is not taken seriously in the medical community. It was obvious to Dr. Danilychev, that this was the main reason for the disconnect and for the nonacceptance by the non-palliative physicians of the consultation recommendations given by many palliative consultants. How can other doctors take palliative medicine seriously if they don't know very much about, when there is no adequate clinical research that exists to show in plain sight, in black and white, the effectiveness of specific treatments for symptom management. This is what has prompted Dr. Danilychev to get involved in palliative research.
During her research studies, Dr. Danilychev focused specifically on optimizing the procedure for reverse clysis (management of uncontrolled extremity swelling), as well as on terminal delirium and socioeconomic and ethnic disparities in access to hospice and palliative care. While pursuing an advanced degree in clinical research, Dr. Danilychev has also focused on getting practical clinical research experience by participating in hundreds of clinical trials as a clinical research physician. At the same time, seeing hospice and palliative patients at their homes, she has continued the pursuit of finding ways to optimize care and improve patients' health, wellness and overall experience. It has soon become obvious to Dr. Danilychev, that Western Medicine only offers a partial approach to health and wellness, even when using a whole patient approach as it is done in palliative medicine.
While working in a hospice environment, Dr. Danilychev had a privilege to observe many complementary medicine practitioners help her patients with symptoms and suffering at those times that she, as a Western Medicine physician, had exhausted all of the treatment options. She would watch acupuncturists, Reiki and Healing Touch practitioners help improve symptoms often in a dramatic way. Although initially these improvements seemed to be simply coincidental, just as they would to any Western Medicine physician, but after seeing it happen time after time after time, it was simply impossible to ignore the fact, that yes, alternative and complementary medicine can be very helpful in some cases, and most likely not just due to a placebo effect. Intrigued by this observation, Dr. Danilychev has decided to learn one of the complementary therapy approaches, Reiki. Although many variations of this traditional Japanese healing art exist, after careful research, Dr. Danilychev decided to learn Jikiden Reiki, as it seemed to be the most focused, controlled and consistent Reiki method. After studying and practicing it for a year, Dr. Danilychev has been amazed with the results! For many of her Reiki clients, the experience has been a "Wow!" (something Western Medicine physicians normally never hear from their patients). Although Reiki cannot be a substitute for a traditional medical diagnosis and treatment, it can be a wonderful way to complement Western Medicine in the areas of its weaknesses.
Dr. Danilychev is currently focusing on development of her holistic practice at San Diego Reiki, where she offers Reiki sessions and Jikiden Reiki training.
After the remarkable learning and life experience of living in Israel, Dr. Danilychev returned to the United States for internal medicine residency training at NYU Downtown Hospital in New York City. A year later, during her training, she found herself being one of the first responders of the 9/11 tragedy, as the her hospital was just a few blocks away from the World Trade Center. Helping many wounded, frightened, suffocating from the dust of the collapsed buildings patients, while living without electricity and running water and breathing the same toxic-smelling air for weeks and months, was undoubtedly a shocking and a life-changing experience for Dr. Danilychev.
While being interested in many subspecialties of medicine, Dr. Danilychev chose to continue her training in Geriatrics at UCLA. Training in Geriatric Medicine has proven to be invaluable; however, Dr. Danilychev continued feeling the gap in her training concerning pain, symptom management, and end of life care. Unfortunately, current medical training forces the physicians to see symptoms only as a way of finding a diagnosis and not something that deserves their full attention. Being discontent with this disconnect between the traditional split approach to disease and the person who is experiencing the suffering from the illness, Dr. Danilychev decided to continue her training in the field of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, an area of medicine that specifically focuses on symptom management, area of medical education that has been traditionally missing or minimal at best even at the top educational and training centers in America.
Getting training in Hospice and Palliative Medicine, was literally eye-opening for Dr. Danilychev. It was simply remarkable to suddenly see medical Care in a different light, to suddenly recognize patients' suffering, to see and hear their needs, to be able to address those needs without having a traditional doctor's agenda and approach of 'I am a doctor, I know everything, take this and call me in the morning. Next!' While helping hundreds of hospice patients and their families, making their lives better and often longer (patients live longer when their symptoms are well-controlled), Dr. Danilychev could also recognize that in spite of the fact that her patients saw dramatic symptom improvement with treatment provided by palliative doctors comparing to the standard hospital based symptom management, the unfortunate fact remained, that the non-palliative-trained doctors often would not follow palliative recommendations.
Unfortunately, many doctors are missing such a significant part of the essential symptom management knowledge, that it was practically impossible to communicate with them in a way that they could actually accept this treatment approach so foreign to them. The main reason for this, was the fact that medical school and residency programs devote little or no time to symptom management training. In addition, most of palliative medicine as we know it today, has developed through experience of hundreds and thousands of doctors and other healthcare providers, but unfortunately very little clinical research has been done in palliative medicine, making its effective daily practice remain unproven in the eyes of other doctors.
Over the last few decades, doctors have been trained to only accept 'advice' that has been demonstrated to be effective by randomized controlled trials. Experience with hundreds or thousands of cases is not taken seriously in the medical community. It was obvious to Dr. Danilychev, that this was the main reason for the disconnect and for the nonacceptance by the non-palliative physicians of the consultation recommendations given by many palliative consultants. How can other doctors take palliative medicine seriously if they don't know very much about, when there is no adequate clinical research that exists to show in plain sight, in black and white, the effectiveness of specific treatments for symptom management. This is what has prompted Dr. Danilychev to get involved in palliative research.
During her research studies, Dr. Danilychev focused specifically on optimizing the procedure for reverse clysis (management of uncontrolled extremity swelling), as well as on terminal delirium and socioeconomic and ethnic disparities in access to hospice and palliative care. While pursuing an advanced degree in clinical research, Dr. Danilychev has also focused on getting practical clinical research experience by participating in hundreds of clinical trials as a clinical research physician. At the same time, seeing hospice and palliative patients at their homes, she has continued the pursuit of finding ways to optimize care and improve patients' health, wellness and overall experience. It has soon become obvious to Dr. Danilychev, that Western Medicine only offers a partial approach to health and wellness, even when using a whole patient approach as it is done in palliative medicine.
While working in a hospice environment, Dr. Danilychev had a privilege to observe many complementary medicine practitioners help her patients with symptoms and suffering at those times that she, as a Western Medicine physician, had exhausted all of the treatment options. She would watch acupuncturists, Reiki and Healing Touch practitioners help improve symptoms often in a dramatic way. Although initially these improvements seemed to be simply coincidental, just as they would to any Western Medicine physician, but after seeing it happen time after time after time, it was simply impossible to ignore the fact, that yes, alternative and complementary medicine can be very helpful in some cases, and most likely not just due to a placebo effect. Intrigued by this observation, Dr. Danilychev has decided to learn one of the complementary therapy approaches, Reiki. Although many variations of this traditional Japanese healing art exist, after careful research, Dr. Danilychev decided to learn Jikiden Reiki, as it seemed to be the most focused, controlled and consistent Reiki method. After studying and practicing it for a year, Dr. Danilychev has been amazed with the results! For many of her Reiki clients, the experience has been a "Wow!" (something Western Medicine physicians normally never hear from their patients). Although Reiki cannot be a substitute for a traditional medical diagnosis and treatment, it can be a wonderful way to complement Western Medicine in the areas of its weaknesses.
Dr. Danilychev is currently focusing on development of her holistic practice at San Diego Reiki, where she offers Reiki sessions and Jikiden Reiki training.
Learn more
Visit San Diego Reiki website to learn more about Jikiden Reiki and Dr. Danilychev's holistic practice.
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