The Study Of The Attitudes And Needs Towards Traditional Chinese Medicine Among The Elderly In Chongqing Main Urban Area

Objective: To establish attitude scale of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)and investigate the attitude, needs and it’s influencing factors of elderly people towards TCM in main urban area of Chongqing.Methods: The Attitude scale was established by literature analysis,expert consultation and exploratory factor analysis. A total of 1216 elders from Chongqing main urban areas were recruited by using stratified cluster sampling method and investigated their attitude and needs towards TCM.Results: Initially formed the elderly attitude scale of TCM, including "cognition to TCM Present situation ", "emotional faith in TCM" and "tendency of seeing the doctor of TCM" three dimensions and 25 items.The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the three sub-scale were 0.841,0.877 and 0.799 respectively, it’s cumulative contribution rate is 70.57%.The average score of the attitude towards TCM was 69.50±10.28.Multiple linear regression analysis showed that the influencing factors were education levels, whether they had chronic diseases, cognitive levels ofTCM, monthly income and the kind of medical insurance they bought.70.6% of the elderly need various forms of TCM services, and the needs of TCM health education service(76.5%)and chronic disease management and TCM prevention service(72.7%)were in a large proportion.Conclusion: Test showed that the elderly attitude scale of TCM has good reliability and validity, and it can be used as a related survey assessment tools. The elderly have a high acceptance and demand of TCM.Enhancing the elderly’s correct cognition of TCM and improving its related policies and regulations is conducive to further promote the application of the TCM in health services among the elderly.