Preparing complementary and alternative practitioners to teach learners in conventional health professions.

Federal funding is supporting complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) educational programming in health-professions schools in the United States. CAM practitioners from a wide range of disciplines are now being invited to participate as instructors or content experts in this effort. The challenge is to promote effective and consistent teaching methods around appropriate content. This article describes the development of a series of 4 workshops intended to enhance the teaching skills of 9 complementary medicine practitioners participating in an educational project at the University of North Carolina. Key issues addressed in the workshops included the interface between CAM and conventional medicine, a better understanding of the nature of conventional medical practice, styles and strategies in teaching complementary medicine, and building skills in accessing information from databases.