Patient experiences and outcomes in a virtual healing setting: A feasibility study.

Research Questions: How do participants with anxiety receiving distance healing using tuning forks, experience healing sessions? What outcomes do they spontaneously report?

Theoretical Framework: Modified grounded theory, using single interviews to learn about experiences with distant sound healing.

Methodology: Standardized open-ended, qualitative interviews of 30-minute length were conducted after the intervention and analyzed using an inductive and iterative process for identifying themes, categories, and patterns in qualitative data.

Context: Single-arm, pilot feasibility study of Biofield Tuning (BT) for anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic delivered at a distance facilitated by Zoom (without video).

Sound healing reduces generalized anxiety during the pandemic: A feasibility study.

Objectives: This study examined the feasibility and effectiveness of a virtually-delivered, biofield-based sound healing treatment to reduce anxiety for individuals meeting criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

Design: This one-group, mixed-method feasibility study was conducted virtually via Zoom during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic. Fifteen participants with moderate to high levels of anxiety as determined by the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (≥10), were enrolled.

Why and How Should We Integrate Biomarkers into Complex Trials? A Discussion on Paradigms and Clinical Research Strategies.

Background: Research in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) encounters a variety of challenges, such as potentially synergistic, multimodal, and complex interventions which are often dependent on the relationship between practitioner and patient, on specific settings, and on patients' individual preferences, expectations, beliefs, and motivations. Moreover, patients seeking CAM care often suffer from chronic disease conditions, and multiple symptoms and/or pathologies. On the other hand, CAM interventions are often challenged as being solely dependent on subjective and nonspecific factors without biologically based mechanisms of action.

Convergent Points for Conventional Medicine and Whole Systems Research: A User's Guide.

Context: Value-based health care has emerged as a manifestation of the conventional medicine community's awareness of the overlapping needs to both better incorporate patient centeredness into practice and research paradigms and further develop a systemic approach to cost reduction.

Background: The origins of the whole systems research (WSR) movement date to the late 1990s, when the U.S.

Comparative Effectiveness of Usual Care With or Without Chiropractic Care in Patients with Recurrent Musculoskeletal Back and Neck Pain.

Background: Chiropractic care is a popular alternative for back and neck pain, with efficacy comparable to usual care in randomized trials. However, the effectiveness of chiropractic care as delivered through conventional care settings remains largely unexplored.

Objective: To evaluate the comparative effectiveness of usual care with or without chiropractic care for patients with chronic recurrent musculoskeletal back and neck pain.

Healthy foods prepared at home: Diet and support as protective strategies during pregnancy for Hispanic women.

Birth outcomes tend to be better among Hispanics than among other ethnic groups, even when matched for poverty and education, and foreign-born Latinas compared to their US-born counterparts. These patterns suggest that sociocultural factors exhibited by recent immigrants have the potential to protect birth outcomes against the instability of minority and low socioeconomic status. To discover potential sociocultural factors, a pilot qualitative study was carried out in Tucson, Arizona, with 18 Hispanic mothers.

Why women choose compounded bioidentical hormone therapy: lessons from a qualitative study of menopausal decision-making.

Background: In recent years, compounded bioidentical hormone therapy (CBHT) has emerged as a popular alternative to manufactured, FDA approved hormone therapy (HT)-despite concerns within the medical community and the availability of new FDA approved "bioidentical" products. This study aims to characterize the motivations for using CBHT in a U.S.

Implementation of tobacco cessation brief intervention in complementary and alternative medicine practice: qualitative evaluation.

Background: This article presents findings from qualitative interviews conducted as part of a research study that trained Acupuncture, Massage, and Chiropractic practitioners' in Arizona, US, to implement evidence-based tobacco cessation brief interventions (BI) in their routine practice. The qualitative phase of the overall study aimed to assess: the impact of tailored training in evidence-based tobacco cessation BI on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners' knowledge and willingness to implement BIs in their routine practice; and their patients' responses to cessation intervention in CAM context.

Methods: To evaluate the implementation of skills learned from a tailored training program, we conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with 54 CAM practitioners in Southern Arizona and 38 of their patients.

Health Care Systems Support to Enhance Patient-Centered Care: Lessons from a Primary Care-Based Chronic Pain Management Initiative.

Background: Supporting day-to-day self-care activities has emerged as a best practice when caring for patients with chronic pain, yet providing this support may introduce challenges for both patients and primary care physicians. It is essential to develop tools that help patients identify the issues and outcomes that are most important to them and to communicate this information to primary care physicians at the point of care.

Objective: We describe our process to engage patients, primary care physicians, and other stakeholders in the context of a pilot randomized controlled trial of a patient-centered assessment process implemented in an everyday practice setting.

Provider and patient perspectives on opioids and alternative treatments for managing chronic pain: a qualitative study.

Background: Current literature describes the limits and pitfalls of using opioid pharmacotherapy for chronic pain and the importance of identifying alternatives. The objective of this study was to identify the practical issues patients and providers face when accessing alternatives to opioids, and how multiple parties view these issues.

Methods: Qualitative data were gathered to evaluate the outcomes of acupuncture and chiropractic (A/C) services for chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) using structured interview guides among patients with CMP (n = 90) and primary care providers (PCPs) (n = 25) purposively sampled from a managed care health care system as well as from contracted community A/C providers (n = 14).

The feasibility of matching on a propensity score for acupuncture in a prospective cohort study of patients with chronic pain.

Background: Propensity scores are typically applied in retrospective cohort studies. We describe the feasibility of matching on a propensity score derived from a retrospective cohort and subsequently applied in a prospective cohort study of patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain before the start of acupuncture or usual care treatment and enrollment in a comparative effectiveness study that required patient reported pain outcomes.

Methods: We assembled a retrospective cohort study using data from 2010 to develop a propensity score for acupuncture versus usual care based on electronic healthcare record and administrative data (e.

Development and Validation of the EXPECT Questionnaire: Assessing Patient Expectations of Outcomes of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Treatments for Chronic Pain.

Background: Patient expectations may be associated with outcomes of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments for chronic pain. However, a psychometrically sound measure of such expectations is needed.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a questionnaire to assess individuals' expectations regarding outcomes of CAM treatments for chronic low back pain (CLBP), as well as a short form of the questionnaire.

Printed Educational Materials' Impact on Tobacco Cessation Brief Interventions in CAM Practice: Patient and Practitioner Experiences.

Printed educational materials (PEMs) have long demonstrated their usefulness as economical and effective media for health communication. In this article, we evaluate the impact of targeted tobacco cessation PEMS for use along with a brief intervention training designed for three types of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners: chiropractic, acupuncture, and massage. We describe how PEMs in CAM practitioners' offices were perceived and used by practitioners and by patients.

Tobacco Cessation Training for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Practitioners: Results of a Practice-Based Trial.

Introduction: Brief behavioral intervention (BI) is a tobacco-cessation best practice well established among conventional healthcare practitioners. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioners treat significant numbers of tobacco users, but do not systematically receive BI training. The CAM Reach study developed and evaluated a tobacco cessation BI training program/practice system intervention adapted specifically for CAM practitioners, and evaluated in real-world CAM practices.

Primary care physicians, acupuncture and chiropractic clinicians, and chronic pain patients: a qualitative analysis of communication and care coordination patterns.

Background: A variety of people, with multiple perspectives, make up the system comprising chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) treatment. While there are frequently problems in communication and coordination of care within conventional health systems, more opportunities for communicative disruptions seem possible when providers use different explanatory models and are not within the same health management system. We sought to describe the communication system surrounding the management of chronic pain from the perspectives of allopathic providers, acupuncture and chiropractor (A/C) providers, and CMP patients.

Acupuncture and chiropractic care: utilization and electronic medical record capture.

Objectives: To describe acupuncture and chiropractic use among patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain (CMP) at a health maintenance organization, and explore issues of benefit design and electronic medical record (EMR) capture.

Study Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Methods: Kaiser Permanente members meeting EMR diagnostic criteria for CMP were invited to participate.

Ways of Hoping: Navigating the Paradox of Hope and Despair in Chronic Pain.

In this paper, we explore hope in the context of living with chronic pain. Individuals with chronic pain from temporomandibular disorder(s) were interviewed four to five times over the course of their 18-month participation in a clinical trial investigating the effectiveness of Traditional Chinese Medicine. We sought to understand shifts in participants' descriptions of expectations and hopefulness, particularly with regard to the work involved in counterbalancing positive thinking with buffers against disappointment.

Evaluating the use of gas discharge visualization to measure massage therapy outcomes.

Background: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the short-term effects of massage therapy using gas discharge visualization (GDV), a computerized biophysical electrophoton capture (EPC), in tandem with traditional self-report measures to evaluate the use of GDV measurement to assess the bioenergetic whole-person effects of massage therapy.

Methods: This study used a single treatment group, pre-post-repeated measures design with a sample of 23 healthy adults. This study utilized a single 50-min full-body relaxation massage with participants.

Considerations for practice-based research: a cross-sectional survey of chiropractic, acupuncture and massage practices.

Background: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use has steadily increased globally over the past two decades and is increasingly playing a role in the healthcare system in the United States. CAM practice-based effectiveness research requires an understanding of the settings in which CAM practitioners provide services. This paper describes and quantifies practice environment characteristics for a cross-sectional sample of doctors of chiropractic (DCs), licensed acupuncturists (LAcs), and licensed massage therapists (LMTs) in the United States.

Intervention development for integration of conventional tobacco cessation interventions into routine CAM practice.

Background: Practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies are an important and growing presence in health care systems worldwide. A central question is whether evidence-based behavior change interventions routinely employed in conventional health care could also be integrated into CAM practice to address public health priorities. Essential for successful integration are intervention approaches deemed acceptable and consistent with practice patterns and treatment approaches of different types of CAM practitioners - that is, they have context validity.

Role of theory of mind in emotional awareness and alexithymia: Implications for conceptualization and measurement.

The goal of this study was to determine whether alexithymia, which is characterized by difficulty in recognizing and describing emotions, is associated with impairments in the ability to mentally represent emotional states. We studied 89 outpatients including 29 conversion disorder patients, 30 functional somatic syndrome [e.g.

A qualitative study of changes in expectations over time among patients with chronic low back pain seeking four CAM therapies.

Background: The relationship between patient expectations about a treatment and the treatment outcomes, particularly for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) therapies, is not well understood. Using qualitative data from a larger study to develop a valid expectancy questionnaire for use with participants starting new CAM therapies, we examined how participants' expectations of treatment changed over the course of a therapy.

Methods: We conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with 64 participants initiating one of four CAM therapies (yoga, chiropractic, acupuncture, massage) for chronic low back pain.