Perspectives on Complementary and Alternative Medicine: The Role of Nurses and Health Care Providers: A Review

Abstract

In many developing countries, traditional medicine plays an important role in meeting the primary health care needs of the population. Nurses and other healthcare professionals have tried to incorporate some alternative medicine into clinical practice in order to treat and care for their patients. This article aims to review the existing literature to explore the effect, benefits and risks of complementary and alternative medicine, and the role of nurses and health care providers. Nurses generally have a good attitude regarding complementary and alternative medicine because they embrace a holistic approach to health, but they appear to lack a sufficient awareness about the risks and advantages of complementary and alternative medicine and are apprehensive to discuss it with their patients.The literature search was conducted using the leading health organizations like the CDC, WHO, Google Scholar, Up-To-Date,  Medline, Pro-Quest–Medline Index, Clinical Key, EBSCO, and PubMed. This review emphasizes the importance and need for nurses and other health care providers to build their knowledge of complementary and alternative medicine through education and health research.