Attitudes to and use of complementary medicine among physicians in the United Kingdom

Objectives: To evaluate the use of attitudes to complementary and alternati ve medicine (CAM) among UK physicians. Design: Postal questionnaire. Subjec ts: All Members and Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians. Results: Tw elve thousand, one hundred and sixty eight Members and Fellows were surveye d and a response rate of 23% (n = 2,875) was obtained. Responses from the s mall numbers of general practitioners (n = 127) were not included in the an alyses, resulting in a sample size of 2,748: 79% of respondents were in NHS practice, 32% of respondents practised CAM themselves, and 41% referred pa tients to CAM; of those who referred patients, 78% referred between 0-3 pat ients per month. CAM is used by physicians more frequently in private as co mpared to NHS practice. Acupuncture, aromatherapy and manipulative medicine (osteopathy and chiropractic) are the most commonly referred to and the mo st commonly practised therapies. Eighty seven percent of those using CAM th emselves, or as part of their clinical team's commitment, had not had any C AM training. Attitudes to CAM were generally positive, particularly among t hose in palliative care, rehabilitation, nuclear medicine, and genito-urina ry medicine. Conclusions: Our conclusions must be tempered by the limited r esponse rate, but assuming all non-responders were disinterested in CAM, th en at least one in ten UK specialist physicians are actively involved in CA M treatments, although only 13% of our sample had received any CAM training . (C) 2001 Harcourt Publishers Ltd.