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Canyon College

online complimentary and alternative medicine in nursing practice course at Canyon College

COURSE SYLLABUS: Complimentary and Alternative Medicine in Nursing Practice


Course Title: NR320 - Complimentary and Alternative Medicine in Nursing Practice
Department: Health Sciences
Instructor: Richard A. Sherman, PhD - - Vita
Credits: 3 Semester Credits


Course Concept / Objectives:

Complimentary and alternative (C & A) practices, including those which form the core of “behavioral medicine” are rapidly finding acceptance within the clinical community. Simultaneously, “accepted” practices are falling from favor as they are shown to be ineffective or even counterproductive. Patients now visit as many or more “alternative” providers as traditional providers and are spending billions of dollars on attempts to get care not available from the traditional medical community. This course is intended to acquaint you with many of those practices which may become the new standard of care in the near future. It is also intended to help you learn to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the claims made by the proponents of these practices so you can more readily separate the real knowledge from the emotional advertising.

Specifically, this course intends to:
  1. Provide you with an introduction to the basic mechanisms and principles of behavioral medicine and its most common techniques.
  1. Provide you with a balanced overview of a selection of complimentary and alternative medicine interventions recently and currently practiced in the “West”.
  1. Provide information on the underlying psychophysiological mechanisms through which non-specific interventions are likely to produce very real effects.
  1. Provide you with practice in and techniques for objectively assessing the validity of claims presented in formats different than usually acceptable to current “Western” science.
Texts:   Online Bookstore

Required:
  1. Mosby’s Complementary & Alternative Medicine: A Research-Based Approach, by Lyn W. Freeman and G. Frank Lawlis. Published by Mosby of St. Louis Mo, 2001. ISBN: 0323006973
  1. Essentials of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, edited by W Jonas and J Levin. Lipincott, Williams, & Wilkins publishers of Baltimore MD, 1999. ISBN: 068330674X
Optional:

Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Rehabilitation, edited by Eric Leskowitz. Published by Elsevier (Churchill Livingston) of Edinburgh and New York, 2003. ISBN: 0443065993
Format - How we are going to proceed through the course:

Format (How we are going to proceed through the course): This home study course is divided into 28 units. Each unit consists of one of more chapters of reading in the texts, sometimes an audiovisual lecture, review questions to be answered, and an e-mail or phone based discussion with me. The course begins with an introductory audiovisual lecture profusely illustrated by power-point slides.

When you sign up for the course, I will mail you a CD containing both the audiovisual lectures and a copy of the slide set upon which the lectures are based so you can make notes on your copy of the slides as you attend the lecture. After doing the reading for each unit (and attending the audiovisual lecture when provided), you will answer a brief series of essay questions about each topic, e-mail your answers to me, and then we will interact by e-mail or phone about each topic. This will give you an opportunity to ask questions and for me to fill in gray areas and provide additional information on topics of special interest to you.

There are, hopefully, several practices you are or will become especially interested in. You will do four reports on these topics of special interest to you. Three will be brief (between four and six double-spaced pages) reports and the fourth will be an in depth evaluation (between ten and twelve double spaced pages) of one topic covering an area you are likely to incorporate into your professional practice.

Contacting me: The best way to contact me is via e-mail at . I check my e-mail several times per day, Sunday - Friday unless I am away at a meeting, etc. If I am going to be unavailable for a few days while you are taking this course, I will let you know.

To take this course, you must have internet access capable of handling attachments available on a daily basis throughout the course, you must be able to make phone calls and e-mails to me, you must be able to perform web based searches, and you must be able to get the required books and articles.

You will also need to be able to use the National Library of Medicine’s medical literature sites (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi) so you can locate citations (and frequently abstracts) for material you will need for your papers. You will also need to be able to access the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine’s web site (http://nccam.nih.gov/) so you can search for consensus statements about C & A techniques.

Topic Outline / Reading & Listening Assignments:
  1. Introduction – How medical practice changes – the history of C & A practices.

    2.       - Audiovisual lecture 1;
          - Jonas/Levin introduction, chapter 1.
  2. Evaluating credibility of claims for efficacy of C & A products and practices.

    3.       - Audiovisual lecture 2;
          - Jonas/Levin 4 and 5;
          - Freeman/Lawlis Appendix A;
          - (Note that audiovisual lecture 2 presents similar material to that
             presented in the UNM and Behavioral Medicine R&T Foundation
             courses on general biofeedback. You can skip listening to the lectures
             if you had these courses but still must answer the review questions.)
  3. Evaluating the safety of C & A products and practices.

    4.       - Jonas/Levin Introduction to part II, chapters 6-10.
  4. Potential indirect mechanisms.

    5.       - Freeman/Lawlis 1 – 4.
  5. Overview of alternative medicine techniques.

    6.       - Jonas/Levin Introduction to Part III,
          - Audiovisual lectures 4-6. ( Note that audiovisual lectures 4-6 present
             similar material to that presented in the UNM and Behavioral Medicine
             R&T Foundation courses on pain. You can skip listening to the lectures
             if you had these courses but still must answer the review questions.)
  6. Relaxation.

    7.       - Freeman/Lawlis 5.
  7. Meditation.

    8.       - Freeman/Lawlis 6;
          - Jonas/Levin 30.
  8. Hypnotherapy.

    9.       - Freeman/Lawlis 8;
          - Jonas/Levin 25.
  9. Imagery.

    10.       - Freeman/Lawlis 9.
  10. Chiropractic.

    11.       - Freeman/Lawlis 10;
          - Jonas/Levin 15.
  11. Acupuncture, Qigong, & Traditional Chinese Medicine.

    12.       - Freeman/Lawlis 11;
          - Jonas/Levin 12, 19, 23.
  12. Homeopathy.

    13.       - Freeman/Lawlis 12;
          - Jonas/Levin 28.
  13. Massage Therapy.

    14.       - Freeman/Lawlis 13;
          - Jonas/Levin 22.
  14. Herbal Medicine (Phytomedicine).

    15.       - Freeman/Lawlis 14;
          - Jonas/Levin 20.
  15. Exercise.

    16.       - Freeman/Lawlis 15.
  16. Electromagnetic Medicine.

    17.       - Freeman/Lawlis 16.
  17. Spiritual Medicine.

    18.       - Freeman/Lawlis 17;
          - Jonas/Levin 21;
          - Article by M. Shermer on CD in file “flying carpets”.
  18. Therapeutic Touch.

    19.       - Freeman/Lawlis 18.
  19. Trigger Points.

    20.       - Audiovisual lecture 6 (Note that audiovisual lecture 6 presents similar
             material to that presented in the UNM and Behavioral Medicine R&T
             Foundation courses on pain. You can skip listening to the lectures
             if you had these courses but still must answer the review questions.)
  20. Holistic Nursing.

    21.       - Jonas/Levin 18.
  21. Osteopathy.

    22.       - Jonas/Levin 16.
  22. Naturopathy.

    23.       - Jonas/Levin 17.
  23. Diets / Vitamins.

    24.       - Jonas/Levin 27, 29.
  24. Ayurvedic Medicine.

    25.       - Jonas/Levin 11.
  25. Native American Medicine.

    26.       - Jonas/Levin 13.
  26. Biofeedback.

    27.       - Freeman/Lawlis 7;
          - Jonas/Levin 24.
          - Note that the biofeedback topic is optional if you have taken or
             are going to take the Foundation’s general biofeedback course.
  27. Behavioral Medicine from a psychiatric perspective.

    28.       - Jonas/Levin 26.
  28. Incorporating Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine to practice. Ethics and the decision to change practice.

    29.       - Jonas/Levin 3;
          - Audiovisual lecture 7.  (Note: This lecture is similar to one given in the UNM and
             Behavioral Medicine Research and Training Foundation’s general biofeedback
             courses. You do not have to listen to the lecture again if you took the course
             from one of these groups but you do have to answer the review questions.)
  29. Further information Freeman/Lawlis.

    30.       - Appendix C & D;
          - Jonas/Levin App. A.
Methods of Evaluation:

To get credit for the course, you need to (1) answer the “end-of-unit” essays and (2) write your papers successfully.
End of unit essay questions:

These are the questions described above which you will send me after performing the reading (and watching each lecture when available) for each unit. The questions are in the “review questions” file on your CD. Answers do not have to be in formal paragraph format but they must be logical and understandable. The answers to your “end-of-unit” essays are worth 33% of your grade.

Semester papers:

You will write four papers for this course. Papers are graded for grammar, originality, and factual content. They must be fully referenced. Only use professional references. Do not get your information from “popular” internet sites, lay magazines, etc. Each paper will describe the technique, state how it is applied in nursing practice, state the claims of the techniques adherents, and present a detailed analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the technique’s efficacy. The three brief papers are due after lectures 3, 5, and 7 while the in-depth paper is due one week after you complete the last lecture. You will be docked one full grade for each week the paper is late. Only truly excellent papers will receive an “A”. You can e-mail drafts of papers to me in advance of their due dates for an initial look-over. I will make recommendations for strengthening the final result. Specifications for the papers are as follows:
  1. Brief papers: Write a paper not less than three nor more than six double-spaced pages long on any topic in C & A practice (other than biofeedback or relaxation training) which you and I agree upon in advance. The short papers are worth 33% of your grade (11% for each paper).


  2. Write a paper not less than ten nor more than twelve double-spaced pages long on any topic in C & A practices (other than biofeedback or relaxation training) which you and I agree upon and which you are very likely to incorporate into the kind of practice you want to go into. The long paper is worth 33% of your grade.
You need to search the National Library of Medicine, NCCAM, and Chochraine sites in order to pass any of the papers. Your topics are NOT restricted to techniques covered in the course!
Grading:

Letter grades are assigned as follows:

A = An average of 90 or above on the above requirements.
B = An average of 80 – 89.
C = An average of 70 – 79.
F = An average of less than 70.
I  = Incomplete.
W = Withdrew.