CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) knowledge and attitudes in 1st and 2nd year medical students: A pre and post course survey

Purpose. The author conducted this study to evaluate the effect of a ten week introductory elective on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies, further knowledge into what are effective ways to educate medical students in treatment methods not normally taught in American medical school curricula, but often used by their future patients, and to investigate whether knowledge obtained by the pre/post evaluations could have potential to impact the paradigm shift being instigated by the current integrative medicine movement.;Methods. Pre and post course questionnaires were administered to 1st and 2nd year medical students (n=37). The questionnaire was focused on obtaining information regarding the student's attitudes on CAM (i.e. general attitudes, if certain CAM approaches were more 'mainstream or not, to what degree they wanted to include CAM in their future practice of medicine).;Results. Student's attitudes towards certain CAM modalities varied by gender (with female students tending towards the negative on post course general attitudes) and whether the subject material was presented by an MD (acupuncture, herbal medicine) or a non MD (remainder of topics).;Conclusions. As CAM continues to be a commonly used modality by their future patients, further research needs to be done on effective methods, from curriculum design to the actual presenter, on how to best impart the material in a usable form to medical students.