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How do medical students engaging in elective courses on acupuncture and homeopathy differ from unselected students? A survey.
- Source :
- BMC Complementary & Alternative Medicine; 3/9/2017, Vol. 17, p1-8, 8p, 2 Charts, 3 Graphs
- Publication Year :
- 2017
-
Abstract
- Background: We aimed to investigate whether students at German medical schools participating in elective courses on acupuncture and homeopathy differ from an unselected group of students regarding attitudes and personality traits. Methods: Elective courses on acupuncture and homeopathy in the academic half-year 2013/14 all over Germany were identified and participants invited to fill in a questionnaire including nineteen questions on attitudes towards Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), orientation towards science, care and status orientation, and a short validated instrument (Big-Five-Inventory-10) to measure personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness). Participants of a mandatory family medicine course at one university served as unselected control group. Results: Two hundred twenty and 113 students from elective courses on acupuncture and homeopathy, respectively, and 315 control students participated (response rate 93%). Students participating in elective courses had much more positive attitudes towards CAM, somewhat lower science and status orientation, and somewhat higher care orientation than control group students (all p-values for three-group comparisons < 0.001). There were no differences between the three groups regarding personality traits with the exception of lower values for agreeableness in controls (p=0.009). Conclusions: The findings of this study show that attitudes of students participating in elective courses on acupuncture or homeopathy at German medical schools differ to a considerable degree from the attitudes of unselected students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- ACUPUNCTURE
ALTERNATIVE medicine
ANALYSIS of variance
ATTITUDE (Psychology)
CHI-squared test
CURRICULUM
FISHER exact test
HOMEOPATHY
MEDICAL schools
MEDICAL personnel
MEDICAL students
MEDICINE
QUESTIONNAIRES
RESEARCH
SURVEYS
T-test (Statistics)
QUANTITATIVE research
CROSS-sectional method
DATA analysis software
MANN Whitney U Test
KRUSKAL-Wallis Test
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 14726882
- Volume :
- 17
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- BMC Complementary & Alternative Medicine
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 121749090
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1186/s12906-017-1653-z