Physicians’ Philosophy of Care: A Comparison of Complementary and Conventional Medicine

Abstract

Background: This project is part of an evaluation of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) aimed at providing a scientific basis for the Swiss Government to include 5 CAM methods in basic health coverage: anthroposophic medicine, homeopathy, neural therapy, phytotherapy and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Objectives: The objective was to explore the philosophy of care (convictions and values, priorities in medical activity, motivation for CAM, criteria for the practice of CAM, limits of the used methods) of conventional and CAM general practitioners (GPs) and to determine differences between both groups. Materials and Methods: This study was a cross-sectional survey of a representative sample of 623 GPs who provide complementary or conventional primary care. A mailed questionnaire with open-ended questions focusing on the philosophy of care was used for data collection. An appropriate methodology using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches was developed. Results: Significant differences between both groups include philosophy of care (holistic versus positivistic approaches), motivation for CAM (intrinsic versus extrinsic) and priorities in medical activity. Both groups seem to be aware of limitations of the therapeutic methods used. The study reveals that conventional physicians are also using complementary medicine. Discussion: Our study provides a wealth of data documenting several aspects of physicians’ philosophy of care as well as differences and similarities between conventional and complementary care. Implications of the study with regard to quality of care as well as ethical and health policy issues should be investigated further.

Complementary and Conventional Medicine in Switzerland: Comparing Characteristics of General Practitioners

“…We examine four principal structural characteristics of practices in this study: experience and professional integration of general practitioners (GPs), workload, medical activities, and personnel and technical resources. International comparative studies have examined the structure of general practices [6][7][8][9][10] as well as the supply of CAM by GPs [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]37]. A few studies have examined the structure of practices and physicians' utilisation profile [11,19], including a study in Switzerland on the prevalence of CAM in primary care [20,21].…”

Role of complementary therapies in the understanding of primary healthcare professionals: a systematic review

“…For the systematic review, as the studies are the point of interest, articles about the same study were treated together, as a single one. This explains the discrepancy between the number of articles (25) and studies (22) .…”

Physicians’ Opinions of Phytotherapy Products

“…Hekimlerin bakış açısı hakkında yapılan anket çalışmaları geniş bir yelpaze oluşturmaktadır. Marian F. ve arkadaşları konvansiyonel tedavi yapan doktorların aynı zamanda tamamlayıcı tıptan yararlandıklarını açığa çıkarmıştır [8]. Yine Aziz ve arkadaşlarının yaptığı bir çalışma, doktorların kişisel eğilimleri ve deneyimlerinin bitkisel ürün tavsiye etmede etkili olduğunu göstermektedir [9].…”