Why I would recommend complementary or alternative therapies: a physician's perspective.

The successes of science and technology have created new health challenges. The use of various complementary therapies by patients reflects a response to one of those challenges, which is the need we all have to tell our stories, find meaning, and seek healing relationships. Although several alternative medical systems are conceptually incompatible with conventional medicine, the therapeutic modalities associated with them can be evaluated by standard clinical investigative approaches.

Lifetime use of alternative therapy: a study of Florida residents.

Background: Clinically relevant questions remain about who uses alternative medicine, which treatments they use and why.

Methods: The random digit dialing survey method was used to ask Florida residents about their lifetime use of 11 different alternative therapies. The response rate was 54% (n=1,012).

Moving a graveyard: how one school prepared the way for continuous curriculum renewal.

From 1991 to 1996, the faculty at the University of Florida College of Medicine initiated several significant changes in its curriculum. These changes, included the introduction of early clinical experience in primary care settings; the enhancement of active learning experiences in small-group settings; production and use of computer-based interactive learning materials; increased clinical teaching in the ambulatory care training in an interdisciplinary primary care clerkship; effective course and faculty evaluation; establishment and use of an assessment center for instruction and performance-based evaluations utilizing standardized patients; creation of a medical education center as the focal point for logistics support of the teaching faculty and education data handling; creation of a faculty development program; and initiation of mission-based budgeting based on the faculty's teaching effort and quality. Because the faculty were relatively conservative, it was important to identify variables that would facilitate the introduction of changes and those that might hinder it.