Hands in Health Care

Gayle MacDonald MS LMT began her career in 1973 as a secondary school health teacher. In 1989, she became a massage therapist, which led to the blending of her first two careers. After finishing massage school, she started teaching Body-Mind education for massage students. A serendipitous phone call in 1993 led her to develop a hospital massage program for cancer patients at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon. Over time, MacDonald worked with heart transplant patients, women hospitalized because of a high-risk pregnancy, orthopedic and general medicine patients.



Gayle is a pioneer. Her book, Medicine Hands: Massage Therapy for People with Cancer, (Findhorn Press) was pivotal in overcoming the myth that people with cancer could not have massage due to the fear of metastasis. She wrote the first modern hospital massage text, Massage for the Hospital Patient and Medically Frail Patient (Lippincott Williams and Wilkins). It is this book which, in collaboration with Carolyn Tague, she has now rewritten and updated for Handspring. Gayle has travelled and taught in the United States, Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, The Netherlands, and Belgium sharing what she has learned since starting at OHSU 25 years ago.











Carolyn Tague, MA, CMT first studied with Gayle MacDonald in 2005 when the original edition of Massage for the Hospital Patient and Medically Frail Client was published. Since then she has worked in four hospital systems on six different campuses. With 15 years teaching experience, taking on an opportunity to coauthor this book was a dream come true. For six years Tague taught in a hospital based integrative medicine education program and then went on to establish Tague Consulting where she provides continuing education courses including Oncology Massage Therapy, Massage for People Living with Neurological Challenges, Building Therapeutic Relationships, among other courses. Tague continues to work and teach in hospital settings including UCSF Medical Center and Laguna Honda Hospital as well as maintaining a small private practice. Tague is a frequent speaker at massage therapy and integrative medicine conferences and participates in hospital based massage therapy research at UCSF. As part of her professional association work, Tague serves on the Hospital Based Massage Therapy Task Force of the Academic Collaborative for Integrative Health and on the Education Committee of the Society for Oncology Massage.