A Comparative Study of Nurses and Physicians' Attitudes about Complementary and Alternative Therapy

보완대체요법에 대한 간호사와 의사의 태도 비교 연구

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop a fundamental reference for the clinical implementation of Complementary and Alternative Therapy(CAT) by surveying and analyzing different perception and attitude between nurses and physicians. Method: A total of 167 nurses and 103 physicians from two C university health science centers participated in this survey, and SPSS program with version 10.0 was used to analyze the result of survey. Result: As results, 72.7% nurses and 57.1% physicians showed positive attitude for the concept of CAT, 60.6% nurses and 36.7% physicians responded positively while 2.6% nurses and 25.9% physicians responded negatively for the application of CAT to the clinical practice. There was a meaningful difference between two groups in the belief of therapeutic effectiveness of CAT. 67.7% nurses believed the therapeutic effectiveness of CAT while 38.8% physicians did. For attitudes of nurses and physicians toward CAT showed meaningful difference according to general characteristics: age, gender, marital status, a level of education, position in the organization, religion, and duration of health care service other than inpatient units. Conclusion: In this study, the attitudes of nurses and physicians about CAT showed meaningful difference that nurses were more positive than physicians in application.