Changes in attitudes toward and patterns in traditional Korean medicine among the general population in South Korea: a comparison between 2008 and 2011

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Abstract

Background

Traditional Korean medicine (TKM) is acknowledged to be prevalent among the Korean public, but few follow-up studies are available to confirm this commonly held belief. Whereas most survey studies have focused on the demographic factors influencing the usage of TKM, only a few studies have conducted a pattern or trend analysis over time. The purpose of this paper is to observe and document recent trends in the usage of TKM in South Korea and to compare overall patterns of TKM use over a period of several years.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2011 to assess TKM usage patterns and public perceptions regarding TKM. An online questionnaire was administered to consenting respondents that focused upon individual preferences between TKM and current Western medicine, respondents’ reasons for using TKM, the frequency of respondents’ visits to TKM clinics, the reasons respondents visited TKM clinics, and respondents’ perceived satisfaction.

Results

The results revealed that 66.6% of the respondents showed a positive attitude toward TKM. In addition, 69.3% of the respondents had visited TKM clinics one to four times during the previous year. Patients used TKM with the intentions of receiving acupuncture (95.3%), moxibustion (40.1%), and cupping (36.0%) treatments or to take herbal medicines (35.7%). Most respondents who had visited TKM clinics were largely satisfied with the clinics’ effectiveness (56.1%). The factors most commonly associated with TKM usage included sex (female), age (50s), and education (college or higher), but the within-factor differences were not significant. Compared with a previous survey of other groups, TKM usage was found to have increased from 45.8% in 2008 to 69.3% in 2011. With the exception of acupuncture and physical therapy, most usage doubled or more than doubled.

Conclusions

The attitudes toward and usage of TKM in South Korea have improved between 2008 and 2011. This result will be used to explain outcomes of certain social phenomena and to argue for national support in the promotion of TKM.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1472-6882-14-436) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Many people use unconventional therapies for health problems, but the extent of this use and the costs are not known. We conducted a national survey to determine the prevalence, costs, and patterns of use of unconventional therapies, such as acupuncture and chiropractic. We limited the therapies studied to 16 commonly used interventions neither taught widely in U.S. medical schools nor generally available in U.S. hospitals. We completed telephone interviews with 1539 adults (response rate, 67 percent) in a national sample of adults 18 years of age or older in 1990. We asked respondents to report any serious or bothersome medical conditions and details of their use of conventional medical services; we then inquired about their use of unconventional therapy. One in three respondents (34 percent) reported using at least one unconventional therapy in the past year, and a third of these saw providers for unconventional therapy. The latter group had made an average of 19 visits to such providers during the preceding year, with an average charge per visit of $27.60. The frequency of use of unconventional therapy varied somewhat among socio-demographic groups, with the highest use reported by nonblack persons from 25 to 49 years of age who had relatively more education and higher incomes. The majority used unconventional therapy for chronic, as opposed to life-threatening, medical conditions. Among those who used unconventional therapy for serious medical conditions, the vast majority (83 percent) also sought treatment for the same condition from a medical doctor; however, 72 percent of the respondents who used unconventional therapy did not inform their medical doctor that they had done so. Extrapolation to the U.S. population suggests that in 1990 Americans made an estimated 425 million visits to providers of unconventional therapy. This number exceeds the number of visits to all U.S. primary care physicians (388 million). Expenditures associated with use of unconventional therapy in 1990 amounted to approximately $13.7 billion, three quarters of which ($10.3 billion) was paid out of pocket. This figure is comparable to the $12.8 billion spent out of pocket annually for all hospitalizations in the United States. The frequency of use of unconventional therapy in the United States is far higher than previously reported. Medical doctors should ask about their patients' use of unconventional therapy whenever they obtain a medical history.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Jong-Min Woo: jmwoo@kiom.re.kr

Eun-Ji Park: pej85@kiom.re.kr

Minhee Lee: minimarine@kiom.re.kr

Miyoung Ahn: suda@kiom.re.kr

Soohyun Kwon: soohyun01@kiom.re.kr

Ki Hoon Koo: kookies@kiom.re.kr

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Complement Altern Med

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Complement Altern Med

Title: BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1472-6882

Publication date (Electronic): 7 November 2014

Publication date PMC-release: 7 November 2014

Publication date Collection: 2014

Volume: 14

Issue: 1

Electronic Location Identifier: 436

Affiliations

[ ]Policy Division, Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, 1672 Yuseongdae-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-811 South Korea

[ ]Herbal Medicine Research Division, Korea Institute of Oriental Medicine, 1672 Yuseongdae-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-811 South Korea

Article

Publisher ID: 2004

DOI: 10.1186/1472-6882-14-436

PMC ID: 4233081

PubMed ID: 25380563

SO-VID: 972a4530-2cf4-477f-9332-266bd5a3ec30

License:

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.