UTILIZATION, AWARENESS, AND TRUST IN CHIROPRACTIC AMONG PATIENTS IN KLANG VALLEY

Abstract

Introduction The chiropractic profession in Malaysia has grown rapidly over the past five years. The utilization, awareness, and trust were unknown in Malaysia, yet it would be useful in the development of the chiropractic. Objective To estimate the utilization of chiropractic, determine the public awareness of chiropractic and associated factors, public awareness of the Traditional and Complementary Medicine Act, as well as patient’s trust in chiropractic and associated factors. Methods This research was a cross-sectional study conducted in four healthcare centres, namely Klinic Mediviron Sri Rampai, Queck Dental Surgery, IMU Healthcare Chiropractic Centre, and Be Pharmacy Bandar Sri Permaisuri, in Klang valley from July to November 2018 with a total of 440 respondents. All patients who visited the healthcare centres within the study period were invited to participate. The data collection was done by the self-administration method using a questionnaire that was enclosed in an envelope. The questionnaires were passed on to the participants by the centre’s staff. There were five sections in the questionnaire, namely the social demographics, utilization of chiropractic, awareness of chiropractic, regulation of chiropractic and patient’s trust in chiropractic. Descriptive and analytical statistics were conducted on the data collected and presented in tables and figures. The independent variables were gender, age, nationality, ethnicity, marital status, education level, employment status and health status whereas dependent variables were utilization, awareness, trust in chiropractic. Results There were 186 (42.3%) male and 254 (57.7%) female respondents. The youngest respondent was 18 years old and the oldest was 81 years old. The median age was 30 years old. The utilization of chiropractic was 35.9% (95% CI: 31.4, 40.5). Among the respondents, the good awareness of chiropractic was 50.2% (95% CI: 45.5, 54.9) whereas the poor awareness of chiropractic was 49.8% (95% CI: 45.1, 54.5). There were only two factors of the social demographic that were statistically significantly associated with the awareness of chiropractic, which were ethnicity and employment status with the p-value<0.001 and 0.006 respectively. Awareness of the Traditional and Complementary Medicine Act, which governs chiropractic, was only 4.8% (95% CI: 2.8, 6.8). The percentage of patients who had good trust in chiropractic was 48.0% (95% CI: 43.2, 52.8) whereas poor trust in chiropractic was 52.0% (95% CI: 47.2, 56.8). Only one social demographic factor was statistically significantly associated with the patient’s trust in chiropractic, which was ethnicity with the p-value of 0.01. Conclusion The utilization of chiropractic was low. The prevalence of good awareness of chiropractic was moderate, with ethnicity and employment status as statistically significant associated factors. The prevalence of good trust in chiropractic was also moderate with ethnicity as the statistically significant factor associated.