For CAM clinical care settings, our findings that CAM interest is high amongst this patient population and that CAM-interested patients are motivated to make lasting changes in their self-care, suggests an important responsibility of CAM providers to assist these patients in reaching their self-care goals.
Some of the respondents mentioned having an ambivalent attitude, being doubtful about CAM, skeptical and not interested in using CAM methods.
Furthermore, the voluntary self administration of the questionnaire may have selected for respondents who were more interested in CAM thereby overestimating the true prevalence of CAM use.
Fourthly, the lower costs could be related to the fact that patients interested in CAM might have higher out-of-pocket expenses since CAM is not included in the basic health insurance package.
On the other hand, patients interested in CAM are more likely to buy supplementary insurance that covers CAM.
Unlike NCCAM, which is interested in CAM treatments for all diseases and disorders, OCCAM is focused on CAM approaches to cancer.
Fourth, the lower costs could be related to the fact that patients interested in CAM might have higher out-of-pocket expenses since not all CAM treatments are covered by supplementary insurance.
Only 24%% were not interested in CAM.
This is important because successful recruitment strategies sometimes perform poorly in CAM-based research trials, [ 26, 30- 32] even though patients in the community are tremendously interested in CAM for symptom relief [ 33].
Many physicians recognize that their patients are interested in using CAM therapies, some physicians are very interested in learning more about CAM [ 17].
It was believed by 61.2% that more research funding should be addressed to CAM research, 72.8% were interested in reading CAM-research results, and 27.8% would consider taking part in such research.
