The Need Assessment of Medical Students for a Complementary and Alternative Medicine Curriculum

Background: The increasing attention and trend towards complementary and alternative medicine and the usage of such treatments in different nations has highlighted the need for their insertion into the medical curriculum from the basic and clinical sciences courses up to in Continued Medical Education (CME) programs. The familiarity of physicians with complementary therapies is of great importance. The aim of this study was to determine the topics required in the general medical curriculum in the field of complementary and alternative medicine so that they can be further applied by educational planers and administrators. Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study. Regarding the importance of need assessment, at first the agreement-centric Delphi method was used by 15 faculty members and medical students (five faculty members of traditional medicine, five faculty members of clinical sciences and five students) in 3 rounds. With the distribution of open-response questions, the necessary topics in the field of complementary and alternative medicine were covered and after finalization, a structured questionnaire was prepared. In the next step the validity and reliability of the structured questionnaire was studied, then it was completed by 169 cases of the study population and the results were disclosed. Results: The following results were obtained on the needs of the medical curriculum regarding the alternative and complementary medicine: acupuncture: 80.5%; chiropractic: 66.85%, homeopathy: 63.99%, yoga/ tai chi/ spiritual healing/ relaxation: 87.56%, reflexology: 63.35%, hypnotherapy: 63.89%, herbal therapy: 80.46%, damp and dry cupping: 46.73% and massage therapy: 25.50%. Accordingly, the first priority was yoga/ tai chi/ spiritual healing/ relaxation whereas the last priority was massage therapy. Conclusion: The ultimate goal of complementary and alternative medicine training for medical students is to prepare them for a logical and informed encounter with an important challenge in medicine. Therefore, a change in the training programs of medical faculties seems necessary based on the need assessments having been performed in this respect.