Trends and patterns of use of CAM (Complementary and alternative medicine) among senior nursing students

[摘要] The use and teaching of CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) therapies is agrowing trend worldwide in the pursuit of health and the amelioration of some diseaseproblems. Chronic, insoluble problems, stress (both mental and physiological), and painare particularly the target of these therapies. In February 2001, South Africa became aworld leader when she passed legislation promoting ten traditional or complementary andalternative therapies into professionalism.The purpose of this study was to assess the trends and patterns of use of senior nursingstudents of CAM therapies, and their intention to use such CAM therapies on theirpatients, or to refer their patients to practitioners of CAM therapies. A self-report surveywas used to obtain this data, partly constructed from knowledge gathered in the literaturereview.Senior nursing students from three teaching institutions in Johannesburg participated inthe survey. A pilot study to test the feasibility of the study and the reliability of theinstrument was carried out at one of these three institutions. The group that participatedin the pilot was not the same group that was later used as subjects at this institution. Thepilot test was then subjected to a Peason's Product-Moment Correlation test to assess testretestreliability. Pearson's r was found to be 0.8, which shows high reliability of theinstrument.Descriptive statistics (frequencies, means, and proportions) were used to summarize andpresent the results. The main results are as follows. A much larger group of respondentssaw allopathic practitioners than CAM practitioners for their personal health problemsand to maintain their health. Knowledge of CAM therapies was reported to be fairly low,though this may be due to the number of therapies presented for consideration. A largepercentage of the respondents was interested in learning about, and even practicing CAMtherapies on their patients, and in referring their patients to CAM practitioners or beingable to advise them about CAM therapies and remedies appropriately.Given these results, with regard to nursing education, it was suggested that at least anintroductory course to the basic tenets of CAM therapies and holistic or body-mindmedicine, needs to be presented to all student nurses. The problems inherent indeveloping adequate and relevant research avenues for these complex subjects, and anunderstanding of a range of the most commonly practiced CAM therapies needs to beincluded at neophyte nursing level. Focussed suggestions are made in the body of thereport. Focussed suggestions are also made with regard to future research, both withinthe field of nursing and related allopathic disciplines possibly interested in incorporatingaspects of CAM therapies within their own bodies of knowledge, and outside thesedisciplines. Suggestions relevant to the teaching and practice of a few CAM therapiespracticed by the researcher, and of pharmacological and other possible avenues ofresearch relevant to some of these therapies, will be made in the form of further articlessubmitted to the professional magazines of the CAM therapies concerned.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand