Spirituality and choice of health care practitioner.
BACKGROUND: Patients who include a complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) practitioner in their health care represent a small percentage of the population identified as CAM users. Their choice may be motivated by intangible personality or worldview characteristics. OBJECTIVE: A prospective study was designed to determine if a patient's choice of conventional or alternative health care practitioner was related to total score on an instrument for scaling psychospiritual characteristics. DESIGN: A sequential convenience sample of patients attending five different health care practices in New England. SETTING: A family practitioner (FP) who uses CAM. (1) A FP clearly not identified with CAM. (3) A chiropractor. (4) A naturopath, and (5) A homeopath. OUTCOME MEASURES: Total scores on the Spiritual Involvement and Beliefs Scale (SIBS), plus item scores of five separate questions and two factors. RESULTS: With 210 respondents, SIBS scores in Practice 2 were significantly lower than in practice 1 (p = 0.004), 3 (p = 0.001), 4 (p = 0.018), and 5 (p = 0.02). This pattern remained over the five question scores and two factors. CONCLUSION: Patients who chose a physician associated with CAM, or an alternative practitioner (chiropractor, naturopath, or homeopath) for their direct health care scored higher on a psychospiritual testing instrument (SIBS) than those who chose a conventional physician.