Use of and attitudes toward complementary and alternative medicine among obstetricians in Israel.

Objective: To examine attitudes toward and use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by obstetricians during pregnancy and childbirth.

Methods: Between 2010 and 2011, obstetricians from 7 medical centers (n=170) in Israel completed questionnaires examining the use and recommendation of CAM treatments during pregnancy and childbirth. Attitudes were examined via the CAM Health Belief Questionnaire (CHBQ).

Complementary and alternative health care in Israel.

The paper explores the patterns of coexistence of alternative/complementary health care (CAM) and conventional medicine in Israel in the cultural, political, and social contexts of the society. The data are drawn from over ten years of sociological research on CAM in Israel, which included observation, survey research, and over one hundred in-depth interviews with a variety of CAM practitioners - many with bio-medical credentials - and with policy makers in the major medical institutions. The analysis considers the reasons for CAM use, number of practitioners, the frequency of CAM use and some of its correlates, and how CAM is regulated.

Integrating CAM and biomedicine in primary care settings: physicians' perspectives on boundaries and boundary work.

In this article, we present the results of a study that was conducted among 15 family physicians who had incorporated complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) into their clinical work in Israel. We aimed to explore the types of boundaries those physicians encountered, how these boundaries were contoured, and under what circumstances they were crossed. We conducted in-depth interviews with the physicians in 2008, and found that epistemological and cognitive boundaries did not pose a problem for them.

Use of and attitudes toward complementary and alternative medicine among nurse-midwives in Israel.

Objective: The objective of the study was to evaluate the use and attitudes of nurse-midwives in Israel toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

Study Design: In a cross-sectional study, nurse-midwives from 5 Israeli medical centers completed the CAM Health Belief Questionnaire, a validated tool examining data regarding personal health behavior, use of CAM therapies, and attitudes toward CAM.

Results: One hundred seventy-three of 238 potential respondents completed the questionnaires (72.

Change and stability: use of complementary and alternative medicine in Israel: 1993, 2000 and 2007.

Background: Complementary and alternative health care has gained increasing popularity in Western societies in recent years. The objective of the article is to explore cross-sectional variations and temporal changes in the patterns of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) consultations in Israel in 1993, 2000 and 2007.

Methods: Interviews were conducted with 2003 respondents in 1993, 2505 in 2000, and 752 in 2007, using identical questions.

Are users of complementary and alternative medicine sicker than non-users?

Higher utilization of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), both in cross-sections and over time, is commonly related to better socioeconomic status and to increased dissatisfaction with conventional medicine and its values. Little is known about health differences between users and non-users of CAM. The objective of the paper is to explore the difference in health measured by the SF-36 instrument between users and non-users of CAM, and to estimate the relative importance of the SF-36 health domains scales to the likelihood of consulting CAM providers.

Complementary and alternative medicine: Beyond users and nonusers.

Background: Studies of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) commonly distinguish between "users" and "nonusers".

Objectives: To examine the group of "users" of CAM practitioners' services, and to characterize its heterogeneity in relation to the conventional medicine system.

Design: The heterogeneity of CAM users was examined with respect to three variables: user-type-CAM only or both CAM and conventional therapies, provider-type-CAM provider is a medical doctor or not, and referral-type-by a physician or self-referral.

Satisfaction with Family Physicians and Specialists and the use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Israel.

Higher utilization of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is commonly explained by dissatisfaction or disappointment with conventional medical treatment. To explore, at two points in time in Israel, the associations between six domains of satisfaction (attitude, length of visits, availability, information sharing, perceived quality of care and overall) with conventional family physicians' and specialists' services and the likelihood of consulting CAM providers. This is a secondary analysis of interviews, which were conducted with 2000 persons in 1993 and 2500 persons in 2000, representing the Israeli Jewish urban population aged 45-75 in those years.

Nurses in alternative health care: integrating medical paradigms.

The article is concerned with nurses in Israel who incorporate alternative health care practices into their work, and considers strategies used by them to reconcile a variety of theoretical and practice traditions. The analysis utilizes boundary theory and focuses on the following boundaries: territorial, epistemological, authority, and social. In-depth narrative interviews were carried out in 2004 with 15 nurses who were working or recently worked in both biomedical and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) settings.

Boundary at work: alternative medicine in biomedical settings.

The study explores the process of boundary demarcation within hospital settings by examining a new phenomenon in modern medicine: collaboration between alternative and biomedical practitioners (primarily physicians) working together in biomedical settings. The study uses qualitative methods to examine the nature of this collaboration by calling attention to the ways in which the biomedical profession manages to secure its boundaries and to protect its hard-core professional knowledge. It identifies the processes of exclusion and marginalization as the main mechanisms by which symbolic boundaries are marked daily in the professional field.

Between formal and enacted policy: changing the contours of boundaries.

This study examines the strategies of the biomedical discourse vis-à-vis the growing public demand for alternative medicine by comparing formal and informal claims for jurisdiction. The analysis is based on two main sources of data from Israel: (a) two formal position statements, and (b) a series of participant observations and interviews with practitioners in clinical settings where biomedical and alternative practitioners collaborate. At the formal level, the biomedical discourse seeks to secure its dominant position by drawing strict cognitive and moral lines differentiating "proper biomedicine" from "improper alternative medicine.

Changing boundaries: modes of coexistence of alternative and biomedicine.

In this article, the authors address the boundaries of institutional structures, the dynamics of their configuration, and the nature of their permeability. The authors explored these issues in Israel, where the changing relationship of bio- and alternative medicine elucidates recent processes of professional boundary redefinition. They used qualitative methods to analyze in-depth interviews in clinics and hospitals where alternative and biomedical practitioners work under the formal auspices of publicly sponsored biomedical organizations.

Use of complementary and alternative medicine in Israel: 2000 vs. 1993.

Background: Complementary and alternative medical care has gained increasing popularity in western societies in recent years.

Objectives: To provide a cross-sectional and temporal (2000 vs. 1993) analysis of the use of complementary and alternative medicine in Israel.

Entering the well-guarded fortress: alternative practitioners in hospital settings.

There is a growing evidence that alternative health care practitioners and physicians are working together in collaborative patterns. The paper examines these collaborative patterns in hospital settings in Israel. On the theoretical level, the specific issues relate to theories concerning relationships between dominant institutional structures which enjoy the benefits of epistemological legitimacy as well as extensive, supportive social structures and groups of non-conformists who seek to attain many of the same goals by utilizing different methods based on other epistemologies.