IRIS R. BELL, M.D., M.D.(H.), Ph.D.,^1-9 MARY KOITHAN, R.N., Ph.D., A.P.R.N., B.C.,¹⁰ MARGARET M. GORMAN, B.A. P.A.-C.,¹ and CAROL M. BALDWIN, R.N., Ph.D., H.N.C.¹¹

Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine, February, 2003.

Abstract

Objectives: To identify areas that classical homeopathic practitioners would want to see evaluated in a patient self-report questionnaire sensitive to change during constitutional treatment.

Design: Open-ended, written practitioner questionnaire, analyzed using inductive contentanalysis.

Settings/Location: Two classical homeopathic meetings held in the western United States.

Subjects: Homeopathic practitioners attending the above professional meetings and volunteering to complete the questionnaire in response to announcements prior to sessions.

Data collection methods: Practitioners completed a demographic questionnaire and answered an open-ended question inquiring for changes about which to ask people undergoing classical homeopathic constitutional treatment.

Results: The categories that the 38 homeopaths identified included changes in: (1) emotions; (2) mentation; (3) specific physical functioning; (4) general physical changes; (5) perception of self; (6) relationships; (7) spirituality; (8) lifestyle; (9) energy; (10) dream content and tone; (11) well-being; (12) perceptions by others; (13) life relationships; (14) a sense of freedom or feeling less "stuck"; (15) sleep; (16) coping; (17) ability to adapt; (18) creativity; and (19) recall of past experiences. Sixteen percent (16%) of participants added more in-depth description of the nature of changes across categories (i.e., a rhythmical process of innovation and flux).

Conclusions: The findings are consistent with the systemic orientation of classical homeopathic philosophy to evaluate and treat the patient as a whole. Taken together, the results sup-port the need for development of new, multidimensional outcome measures for clinical researchin homeopathy beyond the disease-specific and health-related quality-of-life scales available fromc onventional medical research.

¹Program in Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
²Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
³Bioenergetics Core, Pediatric Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, University of Arizona, Tuc-son, AZ.
⁴Department of Psychiatry, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
⁵Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
⁶Department of Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
⁷Department of Surgery, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
⁸College of Public Health, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
⁹Research Service, Southern Arizona Veterans Affairs Health Care System, Tucson, AZ.
¹⁰College of Nursing, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
¹¹Arizona Respiratory Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.