Complementary and alternative medicine use among older Australian women - a qualitative analysis

The women expressed a range of views on CAM which fell into three broad themes: "push" factors such as dissatisfaction with conventional health services, "pull" factors which emphasised the positive aspects of choice and self-care in health matters, and barriers to CAM use. Overall, the "push' factors did not play a major role in the decision to use CAM, rather this was driven by "pull" factors related to health care self-responsibility and being able to source positive information about types of CAM. A number of barriers were identified such as access difficulties associated with increased age, limited mobility and restricted transport options, as well as financial constraints.CAM use among older women was unlikely to be influenced by aspects of conventional health care ("push factors"), but rather was reflective of the personal beliefs of the women and members of their close social networks ("pull factors"). While it was also apparent that there were differences between the rural and urban women in their use of CAM, the reasons for this were mainly due to the difficulties inherent in accessing certain types of CAM in rural areas.The use of complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) among older adults is an emerging health issue [1]. A recent review has suggested that the increasing practice of CAM use among older people may be the result of several interacting trends. For example, the ageing of the global population has resulted in a concomitant focus on compression of morbidity. Additionally, increased consumer participation in health care and the rise of the anti-ageing movement has encouraged the advancement of technologies to slow or reverse the biological process of ageing [2]. However, we know very little about older peoples' experiences of using CAM and there has been criticism of the lack of gerontological perspectives within CAM research. In particular there has been a lack of attention to cultural, geographical and other determinants of CAM use in thi