Phd Title: Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in British nursing practice 1948 – 2000
Supervisors: Professor Jonathan Reinarz and Dr Nicola Gale
This research project examines approximately fifty years of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and questions the extent to which nurses practised it in this period – and their rationale for doing so. Through interviews and archival material, the study examines the relationship between CAM and biomedicine from the earliest days of the NHS and considers CAM’s changing status in healthcare provision. It encompasses themes of regulation, terminology, professionalisation, autonomy, training, the effect of healthcare technology, ideas about the body, the therapeutic relationship and the zeitgeist of self-help and alternativism in the closing decades of the twentieth century.
The value of this research project is to further the knowledge and understanding of healthcare provision by nurses. By examining the relationship between CAM and biomedicine in this context, it will contribute to the understanding of the history of medicine in the twentieth century.