Health Care and Social Work Student’s Choices between Complementary and Alternative Medicine or Conventional Medicine on a 5 Point Severity Scale of Diseases

Background: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is still popular worldwide. This study investigates and compares the choices of health care and social work students between CAM and conventional medicine (COM) on a 5 point severity scale of diseases. Methods: In a cross-sectional survey 595 (49.6% response rate) health care and social work students at the University of Debrecen, Faculty of Health completed the questionnaire. Data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results: The more serious the disease was, the frequency of primarily COM and secondly CAM increased (from 37.1% up to 62.4%), while it decreased in only COM (from 26.2% to 23.5%), in primarily CAM and secondly COM (from 28.7% to 10.8%), in only CAM (from 7.9% to 3.2%). Significantly more health care than social work students chose only COM on moderate level (34.0% vs. 24.2%; p<0.05) Significantly more social work than health care students chose primarily COM and secondly CAM on moderate, serious and the most serious levels (62.9% vs. 49.9%; 69.4% vs. 58.8%; 71.8% vs. 59.9%; p<0.05). Significantly more males than females chose only COM on the most serious level (36.4% vs. 21.6%; p<0.05). Significantly more females than males chose only CAM on the mildest level (8.9% vs. 1.3%, p<0.05) and primarily COM and secondly CAM on serious and the most serious levels (62.7% vs. 49.4%, 63.9% vs. 51.9%; p<0.05). Conclusions: Our results suggest that beside conventional medicine most health care and social work students consider CAM to be an important element of healing process, although social work students are more open towards the combined use of CAM and conventional medicine. Our results supported that females have more positive attitudes towards CAM than males.