Exploring the attitudes of students to the study of bioscience within the traditional, complementary and integrative medicine curriculum

Similarly to health practitioner degrees such as nursing and allied health, Traditional, complementary, and integrative medicine (TCIM) programs incorporate bioscience courses in the foundational year. While limited research has explored the attitudes of TCIM students toward bioscience content, studies in other disciplines report largely negative attitudes. This professional doctorate in education addressed a knowledge gap by investigating the attitudes of TCIM students studying in Australia toward biosciences and the factors influencing these attitudes through three studies. The literature review (Chapter 2) provides an overview of TCIM professions and education in Australia as well as the rationale for including biosciences as foundational courses in TCIM and other healthcare degrees. Chapter 2 also presents the published research on attitude formation, and the relationship between attitudes and academic outcomes for students. The first study (Chapter 3) is a systematic narrative review that examined primary published research studies on the attitudes towards biosciences among nursing and TCIM students and practitioners. The review revealed three major themes that underpinned attitudes: actual or perceived intellectual difficulty of biosciences, perceived relevance to programs of TCIM study, and prior experiences with science education. These themes then formed the basis of the demographic and survey questions for Study 2 (Chapter 4). This study was a Likert-style online 41 item questionnaire presented to first year TCIM students. There were 582 participants who reported generally positive attitudes but highlighted challenges amongst older students (35+ years) and students who had previously studied biology. Study 3 was designed to further explore Study 2’s findings by evaluating any changes in attitudes following commencement of bioscience study using four open-ended online questions. The 161 respondents to this survey reported mainly positive attitudes but that the content difficulty and relevance to their program of study remained as a negative influence on their attitudes. The recommendations based on the findings in this professional doctorate are that there is a need for tailored support for some groups and modifications to curriculum design to explicitly link biosciences content with TCIM concepts.