Pediatricians' attitudes, experience and referral patterns regarding complementary/alternative medicine: a national survey

Pediatricians' attitudes, experience and referral patterns regarding complementary/alternative medicine: a national survey
Received January 9, 2007; Accepted June 4, 2007
Published online 2007 June 4
Anju Sawni1 and Ronald Thomas2
BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine
PubMed Central

Copyright © 2007 Sawni and Thomas; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

1Department of Adolescent Medicine, Children's Hospital of Michigan, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI 48201-2119, USA

2Children's Research Center of Michigan, Children's Hospital of Michigan, Wayne State University School of MedicineDetroit, MI, 4820-2119, USA

Corresponding author.

Anju Sawni: asawni@med.wayne.edu; Ronald Thomas: rthomas@med.wayne.edu

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background
To assess pediatricians' attitudes toward & practice of Complementary/Alternative Medicine (CAM) including their knowledge, experience, & referral patterns for CAM therapies.

Methods
An anonymous, self-report, 27-item questionnaire was mailed nationally to fellows of the American Academy of Pediatrics in July 2004.
648 of 3500 pediatricians' surveyed responded (18%).

Results
The median age ranged from 46Ò59 yrs; 52% female, 81% Caucasian, 71% generalists, & 85% trained in the US. Over 96% of pediatricians' responding believed their patients were using CAM. Discussions of CAM use were initiated by the family (70%) & only 37% of pediatricians asked about CAM use as part of routine medical history. Majority (84%) said more CME courses should be offered on CAM and 71% said they would consider referring patients to CAM practitioners. Medical conditions referred for CAM included; chronic problems (headaches, pain management, asthma, backaches) (86%), diseases with no known cure (55.5%) or failure of conventional therapies (56%), behavioral problems (49%), & psychiatric disorders (47%). American born, US medical school graduates, general pediatricians, & pediatricians who ask/talk about CAM were most likely to believe their patients used CAM (P < 0.01).

Conclusion
Pediatricians' have a positive attitude towards CAM. Majority believe that their patients are using CAM, that asking about CAM should be part of routine medical history, would consider referring to a CAM practitioner and want more education on CAM.

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