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Are patients who use alternative medicine dissatisfied with orthodox medicine?
Author(s) -
Donnelly William J.,
Spykerboer J. Elisabeth,
Thong Y. H.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1985.tb113486.x
Subject(s) - naturopathy , osteopathy , homeopathy , faith healing , chiropractic , medicine , alternative medicine , acupuncture , homeopathic medicine , traditional medicine , family medicine , conventional medicine , ayurvedic medicine , psychology , psychotherapist , pathology
Approximately 45% of asthmatic families and 47% of non‐asthmatic families had consulted an alternative‐medicine practitioner at some time. The most popular form of alternative medicine was chiropractic (21.1% and 26.4%, respectively), followed by homoeopathy/naturopathy (18.8% and 12.7%, respectively), acupuncture (9.4% and 10.9%, respectively), and herbal medicine (4.7% and 6.4%, respectively), while the remainder (20.3% and 11.8% respectively) was distributed among iridology, osteopathy, hypnosis, faith healing and megavitamin therapy. More families were satisfied with orthodox medicine (87.1% and 93.6%, respectively) than with alternative medicine (84.2% and 75.1%, respectively). Crosstabulation analysis of pooled data both from asthma and from non‐asthma groups showed that 76.4% were satisfied both with orthodox and with alternative medicine, and 16.4% were satisfied with orthodox, but not with alternative, medicine. In contrast, only 2.7% were dissatisfied with orthodox medicine and satisfied with alternative medicine (χ 2 = 9.33; P < 0.01). These findings do not support the view that patients who use alternative medicine are those who are disgruntled with orthodox medicine.