Motivation for the Choice of Complementary and Mainstream Medicine: Patients'Behavior in a Pluralistic Medical System

Author(s): Messerli-Rohrbach, V.

Abstract: The reasons for choosing between various therapeutic possibilities depend in part on rational and in part on emotional factors. This project dealt with the systematic verification of some decision factors most of which were known already. Ihe project was divided in a qualitative and a quantitative part. 'Ihe qualitative Segment was based on semi-structured interviewe with patients of general practitioners or of naturopaths. This procedure is often used in ethnological research. lt identified and evaluated the main motives for the individual choices of therapies by the patients. The quantitative part of the study was carried out by a procedure often used in social sciences, namely by strictly structured Telephone interviews of several thousand policyholders of the health insurance fund Helvetia. The aim of this part of the study was to verify the findings of the qualitative study and to investigate the possible significance of additional sociological factors for the choice between different therapies. The conclusions drawn from the abundance of data show that a widespread use of complementary medicine is a reality. Both parts of the project came to the same conclusions. Ihe patients use complementary medicine in a very pragmatic way, be it alternately, be it in parallel but not necessarily in addition to mainstream medicine. The behavior of the patients is very complex, depends on many factors, and can neither be predicted nor easily influenced, not even by an additional free insurance for complementary medicine which was offered to one of the subgroups of the study (in conjunction with J. Sommer's project 'A Randomized Experiment Studying the Effect of Including Complementary Medicine in the Mandatory Benefit Package of Health Insurance Funds in Switzerland'). The interpretation of the Telephone interviewe concerning the significance of some of the registered sociological factors turned out to be difficult. 'Me project aimed primarily at illustrating the use of complementary medicine and at characterizing its users.

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