A new study has shown that more than half (53.1%) of office-based physicians in the U.S., across specialty areas, recommended at least one complementary health approach (CHA) to their patients during the previous 12 months, with female physicians (63.2%) more likely to recommend a CHA than male physicians (49.3%).
This unique study, which found physician's sex, race, specialty, and U.S. region to be significant predictors of CHA recommendation, is published in JACM, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, dedicated to paradigm, practice, and policy advancing integrative health.
The article entitled "U.S. Physician Recommendations to Their Patients About the Use of Complementary Health Approaches" was coauthored by Barbara Stussman and Richard Nahin, PhD, MPH, National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, and Patricia Barnes and Brian Ward, PhD, National Center for Health Statistics, Hyattsville, MD.
The data are based on the 2012 Physician Induction Interview of the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS PII).