Spirituality and choice of health care practitioner.
BACKGROUND
Patients who include a complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioner in their health care represent a small percentage of the population identified as CAM users. Their choice may be motivated by intangible personality or worldview characteristics.


OBJECTIVE
A prospective study was designed to determine if a patient's choice of conventional or alternative health care practitioner was related to total score on an instrument for scaling psychospiritual characteristics.


METHODS
A sequential convenience sample of patients attending five different health care practices in New England.


METHODS
A family practitioner (FP) who uses CAM. (1) A FP clearly not identified with CAM. (3) A chiropractor. (4) A naturopath, and (5) A homeopath.


METHODS
Total scores on the Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale (SIBS), plus item scores of five separate questions and two factors.


RESULTS
With 210 respondents, SIBS scores in Practice 2 were significantly lower than in practice 1 (p = 0.004), 3 (p = 0.001), 4 (p = 0.018), and 5 (p = 0.02). This pattern remained over the five question scores and two factors.


CONCLUSIONS
Patients who chose a physician associated with CAM, or an alternative practitioner (chiropractor, naturopath, or homeopath) for their direct health care scored higher on a psychospiritual testing instrument (SIBS) than those who chose a conventional physician.
Petry
Judith J
JJ
Integrative Medicine, Westminster, VT, USA. jpetry@sover.net
Finkel
Robert
R
D000328:Adult; D002755:Choice Behavior; D000529:Complementary Therapies / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005194:Family Practice / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009511:New England; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012424:Rural Population; D029181:Spirituality; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric