Perceptions of Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Medicine Among Neurology Researchers and Clinicians: A Large-Scale, International Cross-Sectional Survey

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundWhile many patients with neurological disorders and conditions use complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine (CAIM), little is known about the use and perceptions of CAIM among neurology researchers and clinicians. With the increasing popularity of CAIM, our objective was to assess practices, perceptions, and attitudes towards CAIM among neurology researchers and clinicians.MethodsWe conducted an anonymous online survey of authors who had published articles in neurology journals indexed in MEDLINE. We emailed potential participants our cross-sectional electronic survey after extracting their email addresses from one of their publications in our sample of journals. Basic descriptive statistics were drawn from quantitative data, and thematic content analysis was used to analyse qualitative data from any open-ended questions.ResultsThe survey was completed by 783 neurology researchers and/or clinicians (1.5% response rate, 83.9% completion rate). Overall, respondents perceived CAIM to be promising in preventing, treating, and/or managing neurological diseases. Mind-body therapies received the most positive responses, indicated by over half of respondents cumulatively agreeing that they are promising (n=368, 59.0%) and safe (n=280, 50.3%). Whole medical systems and biofield therapy were less favourable. Most neurology clinicians reported a lack of formal (n=211, 70.3%) and supplementary training (n=158, 52.5%) on CAIM. Nearly half of clinicians did not feel comfortable counselling patients about CAIM (n = 121, 44.5%), and over half did not feel comfortable recommending it (n=161, 59.3%). A lack of scientific evidence for CAIM’s safety and efficacy was reported as the greatest challenge to CAIM (n=515, 92.5%). The majority of respondents believed there is value to conducting research on this topic (n=461, 82.0%) and supported increasing allocation of research funding towards CAIM (n=241, 58.9%).ConclusionsAlthough many participants found CAIM to be promising to the field of neurology, the vast majority did not feel open to integrating CAIM into mainstream medical practices on account of a perceived lack of scientific evidence for its safety and efficacy. Future studies can use our findings to improve educational resources on CAIM within neurology, as well as examine what effects a tailored CAIM education has on the perceptions of neurology researchers and clinicians.