Integrative Medicine: Knowledge and Perspectives of College Nursing Students and Their Instructors

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), also known as integrative medicine, is an important intervention used for holistic care of patients. It is patient-centered care, addressing multiple aspects of one's health ranging from physical and psychosocial to spiritual influences. CAM has been successful in patients' symptom and stress management, and has grown substantially in recent decades, especially in oncology nursing. Despite widespread use and their support for CAM therapies, nurses' lack of CAM knowledge and vocabulary are barriers to communication with patients. Also, little is known about the student nurses' awareness of CAM and the college instructors' opinions on the intervention, which are crucial in developing the college nursing education on integrative medicine. The purpose of this study was to describe the college nursing students' knowledge and their instructors' perspectives on integrative medicine and oncology care, and compared the data of the two populations. Convenience and snowball sampling were used to recruit participants from the community in College of Nursing and Health Innovation (CONHI) at Arizona State University (ASU). Five students (M age = 20.6 years; 80% female) and five nursing instructors (M age = 56.8 years; 100% female) were invited to 60-90 minute in-depth interviews on perceptions and knowledge of CAM. Four major themes emerged from the interviews: (1) Insufficient awareness and knowledge of CAM; (2) education and information needs on CAM; (3) positive attitudes toward CAM; and (4) importance of nurses' roles in CAM. Implications for nursing included need for more structured and efficient CAM in nursing programs; early exposure and education of college nursing students on CAM; and academic relationships between nursing instructors and students.