The use of complementary therapies is becoming, increasingly prevalent. This has important implications for nurses in, terms of patient care and safety.
The aim of this meta-synthesis is to review, critically, appraise and synthesize the existing qualitative research to develop a new, more substantial interpretation of nurses' attitudes regarding the, use of complementary therapies by patients. Data sources; A search of relevant articles published in English between, January 2000 and December 2015 was conducted using the following, electronic databases; MEDLINE, CINAHL and AMED. Reference lists of selected papers and grey literature were also interrogated for pertinent, studies.
This review is reported according to the Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative Research (ENTREQ) guidelines.Data were extracted and analysed using a thematic synthesis process.
Fifteen articles were included in this review. Five analytical themes emerged from the data relating to nurses' attitude towards complementary therapies: the strengths and weaknesses of conventional medicine; Complementary therapies as a way to enhance nursing practice;patient empowerment and patient-centeredness; cultural barriers and enablers to integration; and structural barriers and enablers to integration.
Nurses' support for complementary therapies is not an attempt to challenge mainstream medicine but rather an endeavour to improve the quality of care available to patients. There are, however, a number of barriers to nurses' support including institutional culture and clinical context, as well as time and knowledge limitations.
Some nurses promote complementary therapies as an opportunity to personalise care and practice in a humanistic way. Yet, nurses have very limited education in this field and a lack of professional frameworks to assist them. The nursing profession needs to consider how to address current deficiencies in meeting the growing use of complementary therapies by patients.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 24. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 March 2025.
All research outputs
#1,850,050
of 29,688,655 outputs
Outputs from International Journal of Nursing Studies
#243
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Outputs of similar age
#33,331
of 437,508 outputs
Outputs of similar age from International Journal of Nursing Studies
#6
of 51 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 29,688,655 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,836 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.3. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 51 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its contemporaries.
