Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies
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Focus Alternat Complement Ther©2005 Pharmaceutical Press
Focus Altern Complement Ther 2005; 10: 17
To explore the sources of information and the types of evidence that influence male cancer patients’ choice of CAM.
Qualitative interviews with 41 male cancer patients with a range of cancer types, both users and non-users of CAM.
Information plays an important role in patients’ decisions about whether or not to use CAM, and which types. In this study, patients used a variety of resources: the ‘lay referral network’ played a prominent role, also books, leaflets, the internet and the media, with health professionals playing a lesser role. Patients are sometimes portrayed as vulnerable, gullible and in need of protection from misleading or dangerous information and practices. Participants in this study, however, responding to the lack of CAM information available via medical channels, engaged in their own ‘research’ and displayed competence in handling information from a variety of sources. They were discerning in their evaluation and rational in their choices, adopting a ‘consumerist’ approach to CAM treatment options. This parallels the notion of ‘reasoned decision making’ associated with treatment choices in conventional healthcare. Patients put scientific proof low in their hierarchy of evidence, with greater credibility given to personal accounts, recommendations from trusted individuals, the long-established history of a treatment and an appraisal of whether or not it made good sense.
Evidence-based information about CAM should be more widely available to patients but health professionals also need to be aware that patients may draw on the different forms of evidence available to them.
Funded by the Department of Health’s The Role of CAM in the Care of Patients with Cancer programme.
