Quality of Doctor-Patient Relationship and its Effect on Usage of Traditional and Complementary Medicine

The present study aimed to study the quality of doctor-patient relationship, and measure the extent of relationship between the dissatisfaction with the doctor-patient relationship and the usage rate of traditional and complementary medicine among the people who visited the non-conventional medical centers in Shiraz city, Iran.
This was an analytical cross-sectional study in which 800 people who visited six non-conventional medical centers in July 2016 were enrolled; having gained their satisfaction, they were studied by method of complete enumeration. The data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire. Validity and reliability of data were confirmed and analyzed through SPSS software.
Findings: 61 percent of visitors were dissatisfied with the quality of doctor-patient relationship to mediocre extent. There was a significant correlation between the dissatisfaction extent of visitors for doctor-patient relationship and the usage rate of traditional and complementary medicine in that the high dissatisfaction extent was accompanied with the high consumption rate of traditional and complementary medicine.
The usage rate of the traditional and complementary medicine is in relation with the dissatisfaction extent of medical behavior. Thus, providing the doctor-patient relationship is not improved, high dissatisfaction and high consumption of non-conventional medicine will be seen. Therefore, it is to take action to improve the doctor-patient relationship by means of education, and culturalization; in addition, it is to pay more attention to parties’ rights in order to avoid the consequences of excessive and without doctors’ leave usage of traditional and complementary medicine.