Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in British nursing practice, 1960-2000

Gowing, Christine Mary (2016). Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) in British nursing practice, 1960-2000. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

Most nursing history has focused on the politics, identity and development of the profession. This study focuses on practice. It examines the surge of interest in complementary and alternative medicine {CAM) in British
nursing during the second half of the twentieth century and explores how and why some nurses used CAM in their practice. It examines the therapies that nurses employed and how these practitioners were supported. The merit of this research lies in exposing evidence of a more clearly designed organisation of CAM in nursing than has been suggested previously and places it within a discrete timeframe, one already recognised as a period of reform in medicine. In using the methodology of oral histories, archives and nursing journals, the research is rooted in nursing history, importantly demonstrating that CAM practice in nursing was not only part of a shift in consciousness away from a medical model, but was an extension of the patient-centred nature of nursing culture in the late twentieth century. In presenting a movement that challenged the dominance of biomedicine, this thesis demonstrates the emergence of a changing model of healthcare and contributes an important perspective to the modern history of medicine and healing.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):