The School of Nursing and the Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) Research Center at the University of Michigan have collaborated to create an interdisciplinary graduate course on CAM, targeted to health professional students. Students from Public Health, Pharmacy, Nursing, Social Work, and other disciplines enrolled enthusiastically.
The course provides an overview of CAM, including principles, practices, use and outcomes of selected therapies and healing systems. Within the framework of the NICCAM categories, it focuses on widely used treatments, including botanical medicine, homeopathy, bodywork, meditation, and Traditional Chinese Medicine. Students learn to use evidence-based and other criteria to evaluate CAM therapies and research. Ethical, legal and professional issues for health professionals are emphasized, including communicating with patients and CAM practitioners, facilitating patients' decision-making about CAM, assessing CAM services in the community, and incorporating CAM therapies into health professional practice.
The course features speakers from the alternative medicine and lay healing communities, and students observe and experience CAM in the offices of local healers. In addition to lectures, each class features an experiential component, which has proved extremely popular. Class experiences have included meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, massage, and a vegan meal.
This presentation will provide an overview of lessons learned during the course, including the curriculum, discussion guides, experiences, assignments and tests we developed to enhance and evaluate student learning; the rationale for and challenges of creating an interdisciplinary course; student feedback about the course; and our plans to include more CAM content in the health science curriculum in the future.
Learning Objectives: Participants will be able to identify the benefits of and design challenges experienced in an integrative curriculum.
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
Disclosure not received
Relationship: Not Received.