Undergraduate homeopathy education in Europe and the influence of accreditation

Abstract

The safety of patients consulting with practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) partially depends on practitioners' competence, and thus the standard of undergraduate education. Describe undergraduate homeopathy courses in Europe, student/graduate numbers and whether there were differences between recognised/accredited and non-recognised/non-accredited courses. Cross sectional survey of current homeopathy undergraduate education in Europe in 2008. Data from 145 (94.8%) out of 153 identified courses were collected. Eighty-five (55.6%) responded to a questionnaire survey. For others some data was extracted from their websites. Only data from the questionnaire survey is used for the main analysis. The average course in the questionnaire survey had 47 enrolled students and 142 graduates, and lasted 3.6years part-time. An estimated 6500 students were enrolled and 21,000 had graduated from 153 identified European undergraduate homeopathy courses. Out of 85 courses most had entry requirements and provided medical education (N=48) or required students to obtain this competence elsewhere (N=33). The average number of teaching hours were 992 (95% confidence interval (CI) 814, 1170) overall, with 555h (95%CI 496, 615) for homeopathy. Four out of five courses were recognised/accredited. Recognised/accredited part-time courses lasted significantly longer than non-recognised/non-accredited courses (difference 0.6years, 95%CI 0.0-1.2, P=0.040), and offered significantly larger numbers of teaching hours in homeopathy (difference 167h, 95%CI 7-327, P=0.041). About 6500 currently enrolled students are doing undergraduate homeopathy education in Europe and 21,000 have graduated from such courses over a period of about 30years. Undergraduate homeopathy education in Europe is heterogeneous. Recognised/accredited courses are more extensive with more teaching hours.