Negotiating competency, professionalism and risk: The integration of complementary and alternative medicine by nurses and midwives in NHS hospitals

This qualitative interview study examined the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by nurses and midwives in NHS hospital settings in 2008 in the UK. It showed that the groundswell of interest in CAM in the 1990s had diminished by this time due to changes to policy and funding, and increasingly stringent clinical governance. Nevertheless, CAM provided an opportunity for committed and self-motivated practitioners to extend their therapeutic repertoire and develop affective dimensions of practice. However, the integration of CAM did not afford the autonomy, status and material gains traditionally associated with a collective professional project. In practice, occupational strategies were individualistic, and grounded in the assertion of competency through expressions of professionalism rather than the credentialism which underpins classic professionalisation. Central to these strategies was CAM related risk, which became a means by which to claim occupational space. However, the extent to which the adoption of CAM enhanced the nurses’ and midwives’ roles was limited by traditional medical authority; the uncertain status of CAM knowledge; and the absence of collective strategies - which together often left practitioners in a position of vulnerability.

Research highlights
► CAM provision in NHS hospitals has recently declined.
► CAM allows NHS hospital nurses and midwives to extend their therapeutic repertoire.
► CAM related risk is used by practitioners to establish occupational jurisdiction.
► CAM supports strategies of professionalism rather than classic professionalisation.
► NHS hospital CAM practice remains subject to biomedical authority.