title: Men with prostate cancer: making decisions about complementary/alternative medicine.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this study was to explore prostate cancer patients 'perceptions, feelings, ideas, and experiences regarding making decisions to use (or not use) complementary/alternative medicine (CAM).
  
  
  METHODS
  Five focus groups were conducted with 29 men diagnosed with prostate cancer. Content analysis of the verbatim transcripts was used to identify key themes in the data.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Decision making about CAM treatments appears to depend on both fixed (e.g., disease characteristics, demographic characteristics, and medical history) and flexible (e.g., perceptions of CAM and conventional medicine, experiences with the health care system and health care practitioners, and perceptions about the need for control or action) decision factors.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The participants in this study appeared more likely to be "pushed" toward using CAM by negative experiences with the health care system than to be "pulled" toward CAM by perceptions about its safety or congruence with their beliefs about health and illness.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. heather.boon@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: Heather
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Boon
authors.forename: Judith Belle
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gavin
authors.forename: Kathleen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Westlake
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002755:Choice Behavior; D000529:Complementary Therapies / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D017144:Focus Groups; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D009864:Ontario; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000523:psychology*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000523:psychology / Q000628:therapy*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors