Background
Clinical awareness of complementary and integrative medicine (CIM) and prescription of cannabis among health care professionals (HCPs) is important for many reasons. HCPs interact with patients to communicate information and can be credible sources who could provide accurate and trusted information regarding CIM for patients who expressed an interest in seeking information about CM. However, recent research reveals that most healthcare professionals in cancer care have insufficient knowledge about CIM but they were interested to learn (1, 2). With prescribed medicinal cannabis (MC) relatively new to oncology in Australia, identifying changing attitudes, interest and perceived benefit isles an important contribution to the field. Few studies have investigated the attitudes and knowledge of CIM and MC among HCPs in oncology.
Method
This was a prospective cross-sectional survey of a convenience sample of healthcare professionals working at a single comprehensive cancer hospital in Sydney, Australia.
Results
There were 117 responses to the survey. The majority of respondents believed that complementary therapies could benefit patients with cancer (92%) and wanted to learn more about their use in cancer (89%). Respondents wanted to understand the benefits and contraindications of all therapies (70%), and some specifically of herbs (48%) and mind-body therapies (40%). There was strong support for a pharmacy service to evaluate potential herb/supplement interactions with cancer treatment (82%). Attitudes towards medicinal cannabis use in cancer care was most strongly influenced by the experiences of patients and the increase in medical literature.
Further details and subgroup analysis of the results will be provided in the presentation.