Abstract
Background: Traditional and Complementary Medicine (T&CM) becomes a truly global phenomenon. The primary health care recognizes its importance. Number of patients seeking T&CM treatments increased butmost of the health professionals is ignorant of the risks and benefits of T&CM because of lack of knowledge. Health professionals’ view on T&CM is very important for healthcare. The study was designed to assess the opinion of the health professionals in five selected hospitals in Malaysia on their perception of their practice of T&CM in Malaysia, usage and recommendation of T&CM, knowledge on T&CM, integrating T&CM into Conventional Medicine (CM), and opinion on future medical training in T&CM respectively.
Methods: An in-depth semi-structured face-to-face interview was carried out on ten health professionals from five selected hospitals in this qualitative study.
Results: All the participants used some types of T&CM personally and generally recommended T&CM for treatment in this study. Most of them agreed with the statement that T&CM is popular among the population and thought that people trusted in T&CM and were afraid of CM. All the medical staff believed that T&CM has therapeutic value. Almost all respondents agreed with the statement on an integration of T&CM with CM and most of them agreed for T&CM to be a part of future training for health professionals.
Conclusion: From the interview, it shows that all the participants have experienced in using some types of T&CM in their life for whatever reason they might have. However, a small number of participants have negative idea about T&CM but all the health professionals interviewed believed the therapeutic value of some types of T&CM.
Citation
How to cite this article Abuduli M, Isa ZM,Eker HH and Aljunid SM. A Qualitative Study about View of Traditional and Complementary Medicine among Health Professionals in Malaysia. SM J Community Med. 2016; 2(2): 1020.