Determining the Practices and Attitudes of Nurses Working in Intensive Care Units Towards Complementary and Alternative Treatment Methods

Abstract

Objective: This study was conducted to examine intensive care nurses’ attitudes about complementary and alternative treatment methods and the treatment methods they applied. Materials and Methods: This research was carried out with 252 nurses working in the intensive care unit of a city hospital. Data were collected via questionnaires between February and June 2022, using the “Nurse Introductory Information Form” and “ Integrative Complementary and Alternative Treatment Attitude Scale “ (ITATTS). Results: The mean age of the nurses was 25.48±1.99, and 79.8% of them were women. 77% of the nurses stated that they used Complementary and Alternative Therapy (CAM) methods. They preferred massage with 66.7% as the method they knew the most, massage with 45.2% as the method they used, and massage with 42.9% as the method they wanted to apply. The total mean score of the nurses in ITATTS was 25.53±5.97, 16.71±4.13 for the CAM sub-dimension, 8.82±3.441 for the Holistic Health sub-dimension, and the alpha value of the scale was 0.66. The total mean score from the CAM confidence scale is 6.40±1.76. Conclusion: The study determined that the attitudes and behaviors of intensive care nurses regarding CAM methods and practices were inadequate and that they needed to raise more awareness on the subject. The group with the highest attitude of intensive care nurses toward CAM was those whose graduation year was between 2010-2016, and the group with the lowest was those with chronic diseases.