Private and panel patients of complementary and conventional medicine – how well are they informed about the practitioners’ qualifications?

Objective

The aim of this study is to determine (a) to what extent patients of complementary (CAM) and conventional medicine (COM) are informed about their physician’s specific qualifications, and (b) whether they have different health loci of control (HLC).

Materials and methods

A total of 330 patients from eight physicians (three-panel COM sector, three-panel CAM sector, two private CAM sector) and three non-medical practitioners (German ‘Heilpraktiker’) were surveyed using standardised questionnaires, including the GK’ (German HLC scale).

Results

Of all private CAM patients, 95% correctly believe that their practitioner is academically trained; all other patients show a high degree of uncertainty on this topic (30–45%). Some Heilpraktiker patients wrongly believe that their practitioner is a physician (18%) or educated at university (55%).

An internal HLC could be found in 70% of all private CAM patients but only in 41% of all panel COM patients, 33% of all panel CAM patients and 26% of all Heilpraktiker patients. Powerful others HLC is equally rare (16%) in both, panel CAM and panel COM patients, but more frequent in private CAM (33%) and Heilpraktiker patients (44%).

Conclusion

German patients attending private CAM physicians can clearly be distinguished from all other patients. They are better informed on their practitioner’s qualifications and have a higher internal HLC. As reported by others, we generally found a higher internal HLC in CAM than in COM patients. However, our study demonstrates that this is true only for private but not for panel CAM patients, and not for patients attending non-medical practitioners.

Precaution

As the data entry is yet not finished, the above results are preliminary. Complete results will be presented at the conference.