IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v52y2001i1p149-153.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Attitudes to traditional Chinese medicine amongst Western trained doctors in the People's Republic of China

Author

Listed:
  • Harmsworth, K.
  • Lewith, G. T.

Abstract

This study analyses the attitudes of Western trained doctors to traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in Shenyang, Northern China. Research methodology involved a series of structured interviews as well as developing a questionnaire. Two hundred and fifty questionnaires were distributed in four centres, 177 were returned. Ninety-eight percent of respondents had some theoretical and practical TCM training; the older doctors having significantly more than their recently qualified colleagues. There was clear consensus that TCM (mainly herbal medicine) was useful and safe in treating patients with chronic or intractable illness. Doctors were influenced in their choice of treatment by their training, clinical experience and the available published research. TCM was not practiced in isolation, but in conjunction with Western medicine; 76% treating their patients with TCM, 90% treating their friends or family and 82% referring patients to TCM specialists.

Suggested Citation

  • Harmsworth, K. & Lewith, G. T., 2001. "Attitudes to traditional Chinese medicine amongst Western trained doctors in the People's Republic of China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 149-153, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:52:y:2001:i:1:p:149-153
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(00)00124-6
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jin, Lei, 2010. "From mainstream to marginal? Trends in the use of Chinese medicine in China from 1991 to 2004," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(6), pages 1063-1067, September.
    2. Chung, Vincent C.H. & Hillier, Sheila & Lau, Chun Hong & Wong, Samuel Y.S. & Yeoh, Eng Kiong & Griffiths, Sian M., 2011. "Referral to and attitude towards traditional Chinese medicine amongst western medical doctors in postcolonial Hong Kong," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 247-255, January.
    3. Manli Wang & Haiqing Fang & Ghose Bishwajit & Yuanxi Xiang & Hang Fu & Zhanchun Feng, 2015. "Evaluation of Rural Primary Health Care in Western China: A Cross-Sectional Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-18, October.
    4. Li-Chia Chen & Li-Jen Cheng & Yan Zhang & Xin He & Roger D Knaggs, 2015. "Acupuncture or Low Frequency Infrared Treatment for Low Back Pain in Chinese Patients: A Discrete Choice Experiment," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(5), pages 1-14, May.
    5. Miaoqing Yang & Guido Erreygers, 2022. "Income-Related Inequality in Health Care Utilization and Out-of-Pocket Payments in China: Evidence from a Longitudinal Household Survey from 2000 to 2015," Economies, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-23, December.
    6. Miltiades, Helen B. & Wu, Bei, 2008. "Factors affecting physician visits in Chinese and Chinese immigrant samples," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 704-714, February.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:52:y:2001:i:1:p:149-153. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.