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Physician use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) literature
1Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Objective:
To document the interest of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) literature use among physicians.
Design:
A retrospective study.
Setting:
A medical library service.
Main Outcome Measures:
Analysis of photocopy requests from published lists of reference in a two-year period by physicians in the province of British Columbia, Canada.
Results:
The average number of requests per article was 18.7 among CAM literature and 7.1 among non-CAM literature. Ten of the 15 most frequently requested articles were CAM papers. Review articles on herbal medicine demonstrated the most use.
Conclusions:
There is a definite interest in CAM literature among a specific group of Canadian physicians. Use of scientifically credible literature in peer-reviewed journals will be helpful for patient care, teaching, and research in this field.