Abstract
Aim: The purpose of this study was to assess whether family physicians and allied health workers are aware with and have positive attitudes about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
Methods: It is a cross-sectional study conducted during April to June 2011 at family medicine health care clinics in Erzurum, Turkey. There were 231 family physicians in 72 family medicine health care clinics working together with an allied health professional (nurse, midwife or health technician). Out of 462 participants invited, 333 (72.0%) accepted to join. The structured and pre-tested questionnaire was self-completed by all participants.
Results: The main finding was that two groups differed significantly (p=0.001) as regard to their level of knowledge. The other variables like gender, age or working experience did not show any significant affect to knowledge level. The comparison in between the groups shows that out of six questions related to attitudes, only two questions have significant (p=0.001) difference otherwise there was no significant difference among agreements. Whereas physicians have suggested CAM to their patients more (p=0.004) as compared to allied health professionals during last one year.
Conclusions: Both groups have limited knowledge but positive attitude and shows significant difference. However both groups are ready to learn more about CAM and want to improve their knowledge.