The Rush University College of Nursing has received a five-year $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health/National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to provide an educational program on complementary and alternative therapies for nursing faculty, students, and practicing nurses. The Rush University College of Nursing is part of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

Although complementary/alternative medicine (CAM) therapies are widely used by patients to manage illness, there is little or no formal training available for health care providers on CAM.

"And, there are only a few such formal educational programs for nurses in the country and none in the Chicago area," said Dr. Janice Zeller, Professor, Department of Adult Health Nursing and Director of the CAM Education Program.

To educate nurses about CAM, Rush will implement a two-pronged program that will integrate information on CAM therapies into the undergraduate and graduate nursing curricula, and develop and implement continuing education programs in CAM for nursing faculty and practicing nurses.

"Beginning this summer, our nursing faculty will take a web-based course on complementary and alternative therapies. Rush nursing students will then be required to take it starting in the fall," Zeller said. "The requirement marks a significant departure from previous approaches," she added.

 

"We've offered courses with related content in the past, but they were electives. With this NIH grant, we will be offering a required program that all undergraduate and master's nursing students will take," she said.

The program will provide nurses with expertise to assess use of CAM among diverse patient populations, teach nurses to critically appraise the safety and efficacy of CAM therapies, and prepare nurses to provide guidance to patients on the use of CAM therapies.

"The grant will also allow Rush to create learning experiences on different CAM therapies," Zeller said. "For example, we will target our pharmacology courses, emphasizing how herbal therapies may interact with other over-the-counter or prescription drugs."

Zeller said the program would also equip nurses with information to better advise patients on the CAM therapies they might be utilizing.

"We know that patients are reluctant to tell their physicians about what CAM therapies they may be using," Zeller said. "Nurses, because they spend more time with patients, are often in a better position to advise patients on how CAM therapies interact with other medications or treatments."

 

"Nursing students at Rush will also learn how to determine which CAM websites are useful and credible and how to recommend a good practitioner to patients, " she said.

Continuing education programs will target practicing nurses and nurse educators. Practicing nurses will learn about the benefits and risks of CAM therapies, and how to appropriately refer their patients to CAM practitioners. Nurse educators will learn how to integrate information about CAM therapies into their institutions' curricula.

The CAM program will also teach nurses and nursing students to understand and appreciate the cultural issues surrounding complementary and alternative therapies. Zeller said that what is mainstream health care in many countries might be considered alternative health care here in the United States.

"We want to teach nurses to assess patients' health care practices in a non-judgmental way, so that patients can feel comfortable sharing this information, without feeling their health care provider is judging them for using unconventional therapies. In this way, a partnership can be built between the patient and nurse to promote the exchange of information and knowledge," Zeller said.

For more information on the CAM Nursing Education Program, contact the program director, Dr. Janice Zeller at 312-942-4396 or jzeller@rushu.rush.edu. If you are a reporter interested in writing a story on this program, please contact the senior media relations specialist, Mr. Christopher Martin, at 312-942-7820 or cmartin@rsh.net.