Students' attitudes toward geriatric wellness care

At our University we have two complementary and alternative medicine professional programs: Chiropractic and Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine. One goal of our University is to integrate these two programs at the levels of basic sciences, clinical sciences and clinical practice. There is literature that supports the value of complementary and alternative medicine in the treatment of geriatric patients and promotion of their wellness. One of the challenges to integration of our two programs is that chiropractic derives from a Western medical tradition whereas acupuncture and oriental medicine derive from an Eastern medical tradition, and many students seek one program or the other because of their own similar cultural tradition. In order to understand how to devise methods to promote integration between these two programs, we performed a qualitative study of each programs' students' attitude regarding geriatric wellness care.

The themes included in our study were basic science and clinical science knowledge necessary for practice, clinical science skills necessary for practice, diagnostic methods used in clinical practice and treatment modalities used in clinical practice for geriatric wellness care.

Based on our study results we made recommendations to improve both the programs to integrate knowledge, skills, diagnostic methods and treatment modalities for geriatric wellness care.