Differences in the quality of interpersonal care in complementary and conventional medicine

Table 1 Patient attributes and consultation times

Type of treatment	COM	Noncertified CAM	Certified CAM
Age of patients in years*	53.9	52.6	49.4
Proportion of female patients*	59.2%	64.4%	74.0%
Proportion of patients with higher education^a*	24.7%	23.5%	30.0%
Treatment expectations*
- Healing	49.6%	49.6%	58.3%
- Symptom relief	41.5%	40.8%	44.6%
Proportion of chronic patients^b*	46.2%	46.9%	62.1%
Proportion of patients with severe symptoms*	9.8%	12.7%	17.9%
Consultation time (LSM)^c*	17.3 min	20.7 min.	28.3 min.
- non chronic patients*	16.9 min.	19.3 min.	25.7 min.
- chronic patients*	17.7 min.	22.0 min.	29.5 min.

a College or university degrees
b Disease duration more than 3 months
c Gender- and age-adjusted least square means
* Significant differences between groups (p < 0.05, chi-square tests for categorized outcomes, linear models for continuous outcomes)

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