Prevalence, and health- and sociodemographic associations for visits to traditional and complementary medical providers in the seventh survey of the Tromsø study

Abstract

BackgroundPatient-centered culturally sensitive health care (PC-CSHC) has emerged as a primary approach to health care. This care focuses on the cultural diversity of the patients rather than the views of the health care professionals. PC-CSHC enables the patient to feel comfortable, respected, and trusted in the health care delivery process. As users of traditional and complementary medicine (T&CM) rarely inform their conventional health care providers of such use, the providers need to identify the users of T&CM themselves to avoid negative interaction with conventional medicine and to be able to provide them with PC-CSHC. Since the patterns of traditional medicine (TM) use are different to those of complementary medicine (CM), the aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence, and the health- and sociodemographic associations for visits to TM- and CM providers in an urban population.MethodThe data were collected through two self-administrated questionnaires from the seventh survey of the Tromsø Study, a population-based cohort study conducted in 2015–2016. All inhabitants of Tromsø aged 40 or above were invited (n = 32,591) and n = 21,083 accepted the invitation (response rate 65%). Pearson chi-square tests and one-way ANOVA tests were used to describe differences between the groups whereas binary logistic regressions were used for adjusted values.ResultsThe results revealed that 2.5% of the participants had seen a TM provider, 8.5% had seen a CM provider whereas 1% had visited both a TM and a CM provider during a 12-month period. TM users tended to be older, claim that religion was more important to them, have poorer economy and health, and have lower education compared to CM users. We found that more than 90% of the participants visiting T&CM providers also used conventional medicine.ConclusionA considerable number of the participants in this study employed parallel health care modalities including visits to conventional, traditional, and complementary medicine providers. To offer patient-centered culturally sensitive health care that is tailored to the patients’ treatment philosophy and spiritual needs, conventional health care providers need knowledge about, and respect for their patients’ use of parallel health care systems.

Use of complementary and alternative medicine in Norway: a cross-sectional survey with a modified Norwegian version of the international questionnaire to measure use of complementary and alternative medicine (I-CAM-QN)

“…This will increase health care providers’ general knowledge of CAM use among their patients, and further help them to increase their knowledge of the most commonly used therapies and how they might interact with treatment they offer themselves to avoid negative interactions between CAM use and conventional care. As CAM users are people who express health care needs beyond ordinary public health care in Norway, health care providers need to identify them to be able to provide them with patient-centred health care in an open-minded, non-judicial way [ 36 ]. To be able to do this, earlier research has urged the need for more detailed information of the users and their reason for using CAM [ 36 ].…”

“…CAM providers offer their services mostly complementary to conventional treatment [ 35 ]. With few exceptions, and mainly in specific disease groups, CAM use in Norway has been reported as frequency and associations of total CAM use rather than for specific therapies [ 3 , 10 , 36 ]. We have therefore limited knowledge of which therapies, natural products, and self- help techniques that are used in Norway, and for what purpose people use the therapies.…”

Use of traditional and complementary medicine among Norwegian cancer patients in the seventh survey of the Tromsø study

“…A possible reason for this discrepancy might be that we included traditional medicine (TM) in our study, and that users of TM are known to have other associations for use than CM modalities not part of the country’s own tradition. As mentioned in the background section are users of TM older, have lower socioeconomic status and more severe health complaints than users of CM [26].…”

“…This lack of communication can increase the risk of negative interaction between T&CM and conventional cancer care as herbal medicine, used by 18% of the participants with cancer at present, is known to interact with conventional cancer treatment. Another study separating users of traditional medicine from users of other complementary therapies [26], found that the users of traditional medicine differed significantly from the users of other complementary modalities by being older and have lower socio-economic status. We found in addition that men with cancer was just as likely to use TM as women were.…”

“…Associations for use of TM differ from use of CM. TM users tend to be older, have more severe health complaints, have lower education, and lower socioeconomic status compared to the users of CM [26].…”