Toward Interdisciplinary Care: Bridging the Divide between Biomedical and Alternative Health Care Providers

Responding to suggestions that physicians are obligated to inquire fully about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use and its scientific evidence, to acknowledge patients' health beliefs and practices, and to accommodate diverse healing practices, our interdisciplinary CAM integration project created an advisory committee (AC) composed of CAM practitioners and institutional personnel to incorporate CAM- related information into health professions training. We report on the collaborative process and describe group members' perceptions of medicine and clinical teaching.

Information collected from the first two years' quarterly meetings, the first annual retreat, and other venues was analyzed in conjunction with semi-structured in-person interviews of 10 biomedical and CAM practitioner committee members. Data were analyzed using qualitative methodology and N5 software to identify themes and patterns.

Analysis confirmed expectations that allopathic and CAM AC members held different views of health and healing. Member comments reflected points of tension that clustered into three intertwined themes: what constitutes evidence, interaction with the patient, and the relative importance of experience in learning. Recommendations for designing interdisciplinary CAM curricula are presented.

Differences between CAM and allopathic providers were frequent but did not obviate common goals or collaboration. Results demonstrate the potential for collaboration between these groups and our activities may be useful to others seeking to implement interdisciplinary care, particularly between CAM and allopathic providers.