This study aims to describe the Australian complementary medicine (CM) workforce, including practice and professional characteristics.
National cross-sectional survey.
Australia.
Any individual who self-identified as a practitioner qualified in any one of 14 CM professions and working in any state or territory of Australia was eligible to participate in the survey.
A 19-item online survey was developed following a review of existing CM workforce data and in alignment with other CM workforce survey projects in progress at the time. The survey items were presented under three main constructs: demographic characteristics, professional characteristics, and practice characteristics.
Descriptive statistical analysis, including frequencies and percentages, of multiple choice survey items was used. Open response items were analyzed to determine the mean, standard deviation (SD), minimum, and maximum. The demographic data were evaluated for representativeness based on previously reported CM workforce figures.
The survey was completed by 1306 CM practitioners and was found to be nationally representative compared with the most recent registrant data from the Chinese Medicine Board of Australia. Participants primarily practiced in the most populous Australian states and worked in at least one urban clinical location. Most participants held an Advanced Diploma qualification or lower, obtained their qualification ten more years ago, and practiced in a clinical environment alongside at least one other practitioner from another health profession. Participants reported diverse clinical practice specialties and occupational roles. Per week, participants worked an average of 3.7 days and treated 23.6 clients.
The results from this survey of practitioners from most complementary professions in Australia provide new insights into the national complementary medicine workforce. Further exploration of the CM workforce is warranted to inform all who provide patient care and develop health policy for better patient and public health outcomes.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. 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 14 October 2022.
All research outputs
#21,003,232
of 34,039,688 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine
#1,641
of 2,450 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#280,083
of 496,972 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine
#22
of 27 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,039,688 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 37th percentile – i.e., 37% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,450 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 23.4. This one is in the 32nd percentile – i.e., 32% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 27 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 18th percentile – i.e., 18% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
