Considerations for practice-based research: a cross-sectional survey of chiropractic, acupuncture and massage practices

BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Research Article

Judith S Gordon¹  James K Cunningham¹  Lysbeth Floden¹  Myra L Muramoto¹  Cheryl Ritenbaugh¹  Eva Matthews¹  Amy Howerter¹  Mark Nichter² 

[1] Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Arizona College of Medicine, 1450 N. Cherry Avenue, 85719, Tucson, AZ, USA;School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, 1009 E. South Campus Drive, 85721, Tucson, AZ, USA;

关键词: Complementary and alternative medicine;    Practitioners;    Chiropractors;    Acupuncturists;    Massage therapists;    Practice-based research;    Practice patterns;    Cross-sectional survey;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12906-015-0659-7

 received in 2014-09-25, accepted in 2015-04-21,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundComplementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use has steadily increased globally over the past two decades and is increasingly playing a role in the healthcare system in the United States. CAM practice-based effectiveness research requires an understanding of the settings in which CAM practitioners provide services. This paper describes and quantifies practice environment characteristics for a cross-sectional sample of doctors of chiropractic (DCs), licensed acupuncturists (LAcs), and licensed massage therapists (LMTs) in the United States.MethodsUsing a cross-sectional telephone survey of DCs (n = 32), LAcs (n = 70), and LMTs (n = 184) in the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, we collected data about each location where practitioners work, as well as measures on practitioner and practice characteristics including: patient volume, number of locations where practitioners worked, CAM practitioner types working at each location, and business models of practice.ResultsThe majority of practitioners reported having one practice location (93.8% of DCs, 80% of LAcs and 59.8% of LMTs) where they treat patients. Patient volume/week was related to practitioner type; DCs saw 83.13 (SD = 49.29) patients/week, LAcs saw 22.29 (SD = 16.88) patients/week, and LMTs saw 14.21 (SD =10.25) patients per week. Practitioners completed surveys for N = 388 practice locations. Many CAM practices were found to be multidisciplinary and/or have more than one practitioner: 9/35 (25.7%) chiropractic practices, 24/87 (27.6%) acupuncture practices, and 141/266 (53.0%) massage practices. Practice business models across CAM practitioner types were heterogeneous, e.g. sole proprietor, employee, partner, and independent contractor.ConclusionsCAM practices vary across and within disciplines in ways that can significantly impact design and implementation of practice-based research. CAM research and intervention programs need to be mindful of the heterogeneity of CAM practices in order to create appropriate interventions, study designs, and implementation plans.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Floden et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.