Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-9-2015
Abstract
Objectives
The goal of this study was to compare pediatric complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use and pediatric health care provider CAM referral as well as identify predictors of use and referral.
Design
Surveys were administered to 283 parents/caregivers of pediatric patients and 200 pediatric health care providers (HCP).
Setting
This study took place at the Children's Hospital of Orange County (CHOC Children's) in Orange, CA.
Main outcome measures
Caregivers and HCP were provided a list of 32 CAM interventions and asked to indicate which treatments their child had ever used or which they would consider using for their child and which treatments they had ever referred or which they would consider referring, respectively. The main outcome variables were the number and type of CAM therapies endorsed by participants.
Results
Providers referred the majority of CAM therapies significantly more often than patients used each therapy and more often than caregivers would consider each therapy for their child. In addition, children from families with higher incomes, whose parents were older and had more education, who were White, and whose primary language spoken at home was English were more likely to use CAM therapies, all p's < 0.05. HCP CAM referral was not significantly predicted by number of years a health care provider practiced or health care profession, all p's < 0.05.
Conclusions
HCP referred CAM therapies more often than parents reported use for their children. Findings may imply that parents/caregivers are underutilizing CAM therapies for their children. Potential barriers to CAM use in pediatric patients needs to be explored.
Recommended Citation
Jenkins, B. N., Vincent, N., & Fortier, M. A. (2015). Differences in referral and use of complementary and alternative medicine between pediatric providers and patients. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 23(3), 462-468. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2015.02.004
Copyright
Elsevier
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Included in
Alternative and Complementary Medicine Commons, Other Medicine and Health Sciences Commons, Pediatrics Commons
Comments
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Complementary Therapies in Medicine. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Complementary Therapies in Medicine, volume 23, issue 3, in 2015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2015.02.004
The Creative Commons license below applies only to this version of the article.