Nurs Clin North Am. 1999 Mar; 34(1): 147-62.

Evaluating alternative treatments for HIV infection.

Freeman EM, MacIntyre RC.

Barry University, School of Nursing, Miami Shores, Florida, USA. wildh@icanect.net

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) offers views of disease and its treatment that may not compatible with western medicine. In this review of CAM, the authors provide a strategy by which to evaluate CAM in advanced nursing practice. The strategy is shaped by critiques of how to study CAM in light of the relationships that nurses share with their patients. Expert nursing knowledge of HIV-infected patients, in combination with acquired understandings of CAM, offer nurses additional interventions to use in the management of HIV-related symptoms.