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The changing clinical landscape in acupuncture for women’s health: a cross-sectional online survey in New Zealand and Australia
BACKGROUND: Acupuncture is a popular treatment for women’s health. Several trials and meta-analysis have been published in recent years on key women’s health conditions but it is unclear if this has led to any changes in clinical practice or referrals from other health professionals. The aim of this...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8973511/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35361171 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12906-022-03576-3 |
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author | Graca, Sandro Betts, Debra Roberts, Kate Smith, Caroline A. Armour, Mike |
author_facet | Graca, Sandro Betts, Debra Roberts, Kate Smith, Caroline A. Armour, Mike |
author_sort | Graca, Sandro |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Acupuncture is a popular treatment for women’s health. Several trials and meta-analysis have been published in recent years on key women’s health conditions but it is unclear if this has led to any changes in clinical practice or referrals from other health professionals. The aim of this survey was to explore if, how, and why, aspects of acupuncture practice have changed since our survey in 2013. METHOD: An online cross-sectional survey of registered acupuncturists and Chinese Medicine practitioners in Australia and New Zealand. Questions covered the practitioner demographics and training, women’s health conditions commonly treated, modalities used, sources of information and continuing education (CE) (e.g. webinars), changes in clinical practice, and referral networks. RESULTS: One hundred and seventy registered practitioners responded to this survey, with 93% reporting treating women’s health in the last 12 months. The majority of respondents were from Australia (60%), held a bachelors level qualification (60%), and used a traditional Chinese medicine framework (86%). Most practitioners incorporated other modalities in addition to acupuncture. Most practitioners’ referral networks were predominantly based on word of mouth for menstrual, fertility and pregnancy related conditions, with referrals from medical practitioners being much less common. More than half (57%) reported having changed their women’s health practice in the past 12 months; just over a quarter of those who changed treatment (27%) reported it was due to research findings. The most commonly used sources of information/CE used to inform treatment were webinars and conferences, while peer-reviewed journal articles were the least commonly used source. CONCLUSION: Acupuncture practitioners in Australia and New Zealand commonly treat women’s health conditions, but this is usually the result of women seeking them out, rather than being referred from a medical practitioner. The majority of practitioners did report changing their women’s health practice, but peer reviewed academic articles alone are not an ideal medium to convey this information since practitioners favour knowledge obtained from webinars and conferences. Academics and other clinician researchers should consider alternative means of disseminating knowledge beyond traditional academic publications and conferences, special interest groups may assist in this and also help improve research literacy. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12906-022-03576-3. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8973511 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-89735112022-04-02 The changing clinical landscape in acupuncture for women’s health: a cross-sectional online survey in New Zealand and Australia Graca, Sandro Betts, Debra Roberts, Kate Smith, Caroline A. Armour, Mike BMC Complement Med Ther Research BACKGROUND: Acupuncture is a popular treatment for women’s health. Several trials and meta-analysis have been published in recent years on key women’s health conditions but it is unclear if this has led to any changes in clinical practice or referrals from other health professionals. The aim of this survey was to explore if, how, and why, aspects of acupuncture practice have changed since our survey in 2013. METHOD: An online cross-sectional survey of registered acupuncturists and Chinese Medicine practitioners in Australia and New Zealand. Questions covered the practitioner demographics and training, women’s health conditions commonly treated, modalities used, sources of information and continuing education (CE) (e.g. webinars), changes in clinical practice, and referral networks. RESULTS: One hundred and seventy registered practitioners responded to this survey, with 93% reporting treating women’s health in the last 12 months. The majority of respondents were from Australia (60%), held a bachelors level qualification (60%), and used a traditional Chinese medicine framework (86%). Most practitioners incorporated other modalities in addition to acupuncture. Most practitioners’ referral networks were predominantly based on word of mouth for menstrual, fertility and pregnancy related conditions, with referrals from medical practitioners being much less common. More than half (57%) reported having changed their women’s health practice in the past 12 months; just over a quarter of those who changed treatment (27%) reported it was due to research findings. The most commonly used sources of information/CE used to inform treatment were webinars and conferences, while peer-reviewed journal articles were the least commonly used source. CONCLUSION: Acupuncture practitioners in Australia and New Zealand commonly treat women’s health conditions, but this is usually the result of women seeking them out, rather than being referred from a medical practitioner. The majority of practitioners did report changing their women’s health practice, but peer reviewed academic articles alone are not an ideal medium to convey this information since practitioners favour knowledge obtained from webinars and conferences. Academics and other clinician researchers should consider alternative means of disseminating knowledge beyond traditional academic publications and conferences, special interest groups may assist in this and also help improve research literacy. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12906-022-03576-3. BioMed Central 2022-03-31 /pmc/articles/PMC8973511/ /pubmed/35361171 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12906-022-03576-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Graca, Sandro Betts, Debra Roberts, Kate Smith, Caroline A. Armour, Mike The changing clinical landscape in acupuncture for women’s health: a cross-sectional online survey in New Zealand and Australia |
title | The changing clinical landscape in acupuncture for women’s health: a cross-sectional online survey in New Zealand and Australia |
title_full | The changing clinical landscape in acupuncture for women’s health: a cross-sectional online survey in New Zealand and Australia |
title_fullStr | The changing clinical landscape in acupuncture for women’s health: a cross-sectional online survey in New Zealand and Australia |
title_full_unstemmed | The changing clinical landscape in acupuncture for women’s health: a cross-sectional online survey in New Zealand and Australia |
title_short | The changing clinical landscape in acupuncture for women’s health: a cross-sectional online survey in New Zealand and Australia |
title_sort | changing clinical landscape in acupuncture for women’s health: a cross-sectional online survey in new zealand and australia |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8973511/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35361171 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12906-022-03576-3 |
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