How Do Medical Students Engaging in Elective Courses on Acupuncture and Homeopathy Differ from Unselected Students? A Survey

Overview

Journal BMC Complement Altern Med

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialty Rehabilitation Medicine

Date 2017 Mar 10

PMID 28274213

Citations 5

Authors

Alexandra Jocham

Levente Kriston

Pascal O Berberat

Antonius Schneider

Klaus Linde

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

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.

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