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From: werner@aecom.UUCP (Craig Werner)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Patient Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction
Message-ID: <1922@aecom.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 1-Oct-85 00:32:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: aecom.1922
Posted: Tue Oct  1 00:32:58 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 20:26:16 EDT
Distribution: na
Organization: Albert Einstein Coll. of Med., NY
Lines: 48

[1. Hi: it October, I'm back]

[2. I was actually suprised by the following, which among other things, shows
that people are more likely to be satisfied with conventional medicine than
with alternative methods.
	The rationale for the study was to see if people seeking alternative
therapy were doing so out of dissatisfaction with conventional, or just out
of, shall we say, a sense of adventure.  The conclusion of the paper is that
dissatisfaction is not the main motive, although that fact is not fully
explained in the abstract below.]


Abstract from: Med Journal of Australia

Are Patients Who Use Alternative Medicine Dissatisfied With Orthodox Medicine?

[Note: abstracts are not normally in tabular form. I am responsible for
turning the sentences into tables. Other than that, no changes have been made]

	Approximately 45% of asthmatic families and 47% of non-asthmatic
families had consulted an alternative medicine practitioner at some time.
These were	Chiropractic			21.1 and 26.4% respectively
		Homeo/Naturo-pathy		18.8 and 12.7%
		Acupuncture			 9.4 and 10.9%
		Herbal Medicine			 4.7 and  0.7%
		Other				20.3 and 11.8%
Other including Iridology, Osteopathy, Hypnosis, Faith Healing and
Megavitamins therapy.

	More familes were satisfied with ORTHODOX [my emphasis] Medicine.
	Satisfied with Orthodox		87.1 and 93.6%
	Satisfied with Alternative	84.2 and 75.1%

	Corss-tabulation analysis of pooled data both from asthma and
non-asthma groups showed that:
	Satisfied with both			76.4%
	Satisfied with Orthodox Only		16.4%
	Satisfied with Alternative Only		 2.7% (x2=9.33, p<.01)

These finding do not support the view that patients who use alternative
medicine are those who are disgruntled with orthodox medicine.

		William J. Donnelly, BMedSc (1985;142:539-541)
-- 

				Craig Werner
				!philabs!aecom!werner
		"The world is just a straight man for you sometimes"


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