Why consumers maintain complementary and alternative medicine use: A qualitative study. Presented at ECIM 2009.
Why consumers maintain complementary and alternative medicine use: A qualitative study. Presented at ECIM 2009.
Question: Consumers are thought to use CAM because they are attracted to attributes of specific CAM therapies and discouraged by negative experiences of conventional medicine. Research evidence supports this hypothesis, but there remains a need to distinguish between factors and processes involved in the initial uptake of therapies and those involved in their subsequent maintenance. We therefore conducted a qualitative study to explore and describe consumers’ reasons for maintaining or stopping CAM use.
Methods: This was a qualitative study. We interviewed 46 CAM consumers and 9 CAM practitioners, in two high-street CAM clinics in the UK. The interviews were analysed thematically using techniques from grounded theory.
Results: Consumers described and evaluated their CAM experiences along four dimensions: interpersonal (e.g. interactions with practitioners), physical (e.g. sensations such as touch or pain during treatment), affective (e.g. empowerment) and cognitive (e.g. beliefs about treatment). They evaluated their experiences in relation to their individual needs and expectations; financial considerations could limit maintenance of CAM use. Practitioners emphasised the effectiveness of treatment and themselves as contributing to consumers maintaining treatment, and recognised the role of financial considerations in decisions to stop CAM use.
Conclusions: Further work is needed to test and extend our findings in other settings. This study suggests that experiences of conventional medicine are of limited importance after the decision to initiate CAM. Experiences of CAM were foremost in our consumers’ decisions to maintain or stop specific CAM therapies. Maintenance of CAM could occur even if consumers’ experiences were not entirely positive. CAM practitioners may have a vital role to play in ethically supporting consumers’ decisions to maintain CAM use.
219-219
Bishop, F.
1f5429c5-325f-4ac4-aae3-6ba85d079928
Yardley, L.
64be42c4-511d-484d-abaa-f8813452a22e
Lewith, G.
0fc483fa-f17b-47c5-94d9-5c15e65a7625
December 2009
Bishop, F.
1f5429c5-325f-4ac4-aae3-6ba85d079928
Yardley, L.
64be42c4-511d-484d-abaa-f8813452a22e
Lewith, G.
0fc483fa-f17b-47c5-94d9-5c15e65a7625
Bishop, F., Yardley, L. and Lewith, G.
(2009)
Why consumers maintain complementary and alternative medicine use: A qualitative study. Presented at ECIM 2009.
European Journal of Integrative Medicine, 1 (4), .
(doi:10.1016/j.eujim.2009.08.141).
Abstract
Question: Consumers are thought to use CAM because they are attracted to attributes of specific CAM therapies and discouraged by negative experiences of conventional medicine. Research evidence supports this hypothesis, but there remains a need to distinguish between factors and processes involved in the initial uptake of therapies and those involved in their subsequent maintenance. We therefore conducted a qualitative study to explore and describe consumers’ reasons for maintaining or stopping CAM use.
Methods: This was a qualitative study. We interviewed 46 CAM consumers and 9 CAM practitioners, in two high-street CAM clinics in the UK. The interviews were analysed thematically using techniques from grounded theory.
Results: Consumers described and evaluated their CAM experiences along four dimensions: interpersonal (e.g. interactions with practitioners), physical (e.g. sensations such as touch or pain during treatment), affective (e.g. empowerment) and cognitive (e.g. beliefs about treatment). They evaluated their experiences in relation to their individual needs and expectations; financial considerations could limit maintenance of CAM use. Practitioners emphasised the effectiveness of treatment and themselves as contributing to consumers maintaining treatment, and recognised the role of financial considerations in decisions to stop CAM use.
Conclusions: Further work is needed to test and extend our findings in other settings. This study suggests that experiences of conventional medicine are of limited importance after the decision to initiate CAM. Experiences of CAM were foremost in our consumers’ decisions to maintain or stop specific CAM therapies. Maintenance of CAM could occur even if consumers’ experiences were not entirely positive. CAM practitioners may have a vital role to play in ethically supporting consumers’ decisions to maintain CAM use.
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Published date: December 2009
Additional Information:
Presented at the 2nd European Congress on Integrative Medicine, Berlin
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Local EPrints ID: 176237
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/176237
ISSN: 1876-3820
PURE UUID: b046b2f8-eb18-430f-8535-df288bc3b094
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Date deposited: 07 Mar 2011 13:56
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 02:47
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Author:
G. Lewith
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