Knowledge Levels and Attitudes of Medical Faculty Personnel on Traditional and Complementary Medicine

There is no any regular and standardised traditional and complementary medicine (T CM) training intended for the public or personnel in medical faculties or other institutions and organisations related to health care in Turkey. In this study, knowledge level and attitudes of medical faculty personnel on T CM were investigated. This study is a cross-sectional survey study. A survey that consists of 12 questions investigating the knowledge and attitudes on T CM as well as six questions for sociodemographic data was applied to the non-academic personnel that work in Giresun University Medical Faculty between July–August 2019. A total of 260 university personnel was included in this study, and most of them are women (69.2%). Cupping application is the T CM method with the highest knowledge level among the personnel (83.5%). T CM applications were mostly learned by means of media (45.4%). About 46.2% of the personnel have positive perspective towards T CM. The rate of the personnel who think that classical medicine and T CM may complement each other is 71.2%. Positive news in media affect the perspective towards T CM positively (p 0.001). Those whose body mass index (BMI) is 25.0 kg/m2 (p = 0.01) and smokers (p = 0.03) were found to be more enthusiastic about having a profession in T CM. The ones who do not consider these religious approaches as T CM methods have more positive perspective towards T CM (p 0.01). T CM trainings may help the personnel or their relatives to provide the patients that are in despair in treatment process of some diseases with evidence-based information on the matter and give them support in their treatment by serving as a model.