Patients’ Satisfaction form Iranian Traditional Medicine

Background: Many people want to know about complementary and alternative medicine and its effectiveness. People tend to use such methods, especially the Iranian traditional medicine (ITM) due to various reasons and cultural backgrounds. One way to evaluate the effectiveness of ITM is to assess patients’ satisfaction. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 256 patients who had attended the ITM service providers in Isfahan, Iran for more than three sessions were included. The subjects’ complaints and satisfactions from alternative and complementary medicine, practitioners’ skills, and effectiveness in improving symptoms were collected by a questionnaire. Findings: The mean age of patients was 37.9 ± 11.8 years. Women constituted 65.2% of the whole population. Back pain was their most common complain (73.4%). Underweight had the highest recovery rate (50%). Herbal medicine (84%) and cupping (77.5%) had been used more than other alternative medicine methods. The mean satisfaction scores from alternative medicine, practitioners’ skills, and effectiveness of the treatment were 29.1 ± 3.48 (out of 40), 32.58 ± 6.77 (out of 45) and 34.8 ± 3.24 (out of 50). Conclusion: The findings of this study showed good satisfaction of patients from traditional medicine. Therefore, better planning and research in this field may result in even higher satisfaction rates. Alternative medicine can also be recommended as complementary to the routine medical care. Keywords: Iranian traditional medicine, Complementary medicine, Alternative medicine, Satisfaction