A Comparative Study of Nurses and Physicians' Attitudes about Complementary and Alternative Therapy

Jang, Eun Hee; Park, Kyung Sook

Abstract

PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to develop a fundamental reference for the clinical implementation of Complementary and Alternative Therapy(CAT) by surveying and analyzing different perception and attitude between nurses and physicians. METHOD: A total of 167 nurses and 103 physicians from two C university health science centers participated in this survey, and SPSS program with version 10.0 was used to analyze the result of survey. RESULT: As results, 72.7% nurses and 57.1% physicians showed positive attitude for the concept of CAT, 60.6% nurses and 36.7% physicians responded positively while 2.6% nurses and 25.9% physicians responded negatively for the application of CAT to the clinical practice. There was a meaningful difference between two groups in the belief of therapeutic effectiveness of CAT. 67.7% nurses believed the therapeutic effectiveness of CAT while 38.8% physicians did. For attitudes of nurses and physicians toward CAT showed meaningful difference according to general characteristics: age, gender, marital status, a level of education, position in the organization, religion, and duration of health care service other than inpatient units.
CONCLUSION
In this study, the attitudes of nurses and physicians about CAT showed meaningful difference that nurses were more positive than physicians in application.