Awareness about complementary and alternative medicine among attendees of urban and rural health training centres of a medical college in North Karnataka

Abstract

Background: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) includes a wide range of practices that do not fit within the dominant biomedical model of health care and are not commonly provided within orthodox medicine settings. People might be attracted to and use CAM because they hold beliefs that are congruent with CAM. But safety and efficacy of these systems are not well established. So this study was done to assess awareness among patients attending UHTC and RHTC about CAM.Methods: Cross sectional study was done in UHTC and RHTC of SDMCMSH, Dharwad, India. Data was collected by using pre designed interview schedule from 200 patients. Data was entered in Microsoft excel 2013 and analysed using IBM SPSS v20. Descriptive statistics and chi square test were applied. p<0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: 100 patients each from UHTC and RHTC were included in the study. 93% of UHTC and 98% of RHTC patients were aware about CAM. 74% in UHTC and 60% in RHTC were aware of advertisements about CAM. 96% of UHTC and 100% of RHTC patients said CAMs have no side effects. 45% from UHTC and 14% from RHTC preferred CAM. 43% from UHTC and 42% from RHTC patients had used CAM.Conclusions: The awareness about CAM in our study is high, 93% among urban and 98% among rural study participants. Ayurveda was the most commonly used AMT.