The regulation of complementary and alternative medicine professions in Ontario, Canada

© 2020 Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V..

BACKGROUND: This paper explains the regulation of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) health professions, through the comparison of four distinct examples in Ontario, Canada including: chiropractors, naturopaths, homeopaths, and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioners.

METHODS: This study analyzes the agenda setting and formulation stage of the policy process. In other words, it explores what happened between stakeholders before each of these CAM professions achieved regulation. Alford's model of dominant, challenging and repressed structured interests (DSIs, CSIs, and RSIs respectively) is used to describe the competition between various players within the healthcare system and their position in the health policy process.

RESULTS: All four CAM professions have existed as a RSI at some point in their history, however, over the last century has sought to align themselves with various (or even become) challenging structural interests (CSIs) in order to be recognized as a regulated health profession. Dominant structural interests (DSIs), particularly the medical profession, initially largely ignored these professions' practices, unless sufficient public support of CAM practitioners' therapies warranted them to consider the need to regulate them.

CONCLUSION: Unregulated CAM professions may increase their likelihood of becoming regulated if they: (1) gain popularity/strong support from patients or the general public, (2) organize themselves sufficiently that they pose a direct threat to one or more scopes of practice desirable by the DSIs and/or (3) are willing to adopt standards in education, training, and ethics that may [initially] reduce their scope of practice or profession's membership or slow their profession's growth.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2020

Erschienen:

2020

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:9

Enthalten in:

Integrative medicine research - 9(2020), 1 vom: 14. März, Seite 12-16

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Ng, Jeremy Y [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Complementary and alternative medicine
Journal Article
Professional regulation
Unregulated profession

Anmerkungen:

Date Revised 13.11.2023

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE

doi:

10.1016/j.imr.2020.01.001

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM307814955