Theses (Master of Science Acupuncture)

Acupuncture is the practice of stimulating specific points on the body according to the Chinese medicine meridian theory, usually by inserting very fine needles through the skin. In 2003, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a review of clinical trials where it recognised 28 diseases, symptoms, or conditions that acupuncture has been proven to be an effective form of treatment (10). Hence, there was high rate of acupuncture utilization in countries such as the United States of America, Australia, Japan, and Taiwan (4-7). Studies have shown that acupuncture users were also from high education attainment (14-18). However, the rate of acupuncture utilization in Malaysia is still low. According to the National Health and Morbidity survey 2015, only 2.13% of the Malaysian population are using acupuncture and moxibustion according to the National Health and Morbidity survey 2015 (19). This same phenomenon can be observed at the Chinese Medicine clinic located within International Medical University (IMU) as well, where the utilisation rate of the clinic by IMU staff is only at 1% in 2019, despite the provision of discounts as well as medical expenses covered under staff benefits. Hence, we attempt to study the factors that affect the intention to utilize acupuncture in Malaysia, using questionnaires targeted at IMU staff which mainly comprise of the high educational attainment group, by applying the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). The 3 main constructs of TPB are Attitude, Subjective Norms and Perceived Behaviour Control. This study is a designed to be cross-sectional and questionnaires were distributed through email. A total of 156 samples were collected at the end of the survey for analysis. The findings show that subjective norms and perceived behaviour control had a positive relationship on intention, while attitude appeared to have no effect on intention. Variables of ethnicity, marital status, education level and designation had no significant relationship with intention to utilize acupuncture. Gender and household income have shown to have positive influence on intention. Female respondents with a monthly household income of less than RM5,000 show a higher intention to choose acupuncture as their treatment choice.

The objective of this study is to investigate the perception of the patients in Emergency Department (ED), Sultan Ismail Hospital (HSI) towards the acupuncture as a complementary treatment on pain. Methodology The study design was prospective cohort study design. Responses of participants were collected through a validated questionnaire. Results obtained were analyzed using R Studio software. A p-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results Total 191 participants, 52.88% (n=101) of the participants were male, while 47.12% (n=90) were female. All the participants were adult those above 21 years old. 94.76% (n=181) were Malaysians and 5.24% (n=10, China) were foreigners. Majority of the participants’ race were Malay (n=91, 47.64%), follow by Chinese (n=50, 26.18%), Indian (n= 40, 20.94%) and others (n=10, 5.24%). For the occupation, participants who had professional background were 27.75% (n=53), employee were 49.74% (n=95) and businesspeople were 22.51% (n=43). Most of the participants were from the non-communicable diseases (n=163, 85.34%) and the rest were from communicable diseases (n=28, 14.66%). Only a few participants experienced acupuncture before (n=13, 6.81%), most of them only knew about acupuncture treatment (n=155, 81.15%) or never heard about acupuncture treatment before (n=23, 12.04%). The participants never realized that there were having traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) centre in HSI (n=133, 69.63%) and only 30.37% (n=58) noticed that the TCM centre is available in Sultan Ismail Hospital. Overall, the participants (patients) exhibited neutral (n=122, 63.87%) and agree (n=69, 36.13%) with the pain medicine treatment in emergency. Majority of them were also standing neutral (n=155, 81.15%) with the of Western pain medicine being applied in emergency. The patients also agreed the result of acute pain treatment was good (n=118, 61.78%). Overall, a high degree acceptance of complementary treatment in ED in HSI (n= 133, 69.63%) with no contra. The participants agreed they would be exposed to the risk being addicted if only depended on western medicine in pain treatment (n=113, 59.16%). They were agreeing that the acupuncture treatment had been globally proven (n=121, 63.35%), efficacious (n=134, 70.16%) and safe (n=129, 67.54%) as most of the participants only heard and never tried this treatment before (n=121, 63.35%). The participants also strongly agreed or showed high willingness to try acupuncture treatment if the opportunity was being provided (n=146, 76.44%). The patients agreed when answering the question regarding to the advantages of received acupuncture treatment (n=95, 49.74%). The vast majority of the participants strongly agreed that the acupuncture as a complementary treatment would reduce the side effect of the western medicine as well (n=157, 82.20%). Conclusion Through the study conducted, it can be concluded that the patients in ED HSI, Johor Bahru Malaysia were highly accepted the use of acupuncture as complementary treatment to treat pain. Hence, the acupuncture as complementary treatment for pain in emergency department should be widely popularized not only in in ED, HSI. This treatment is also strongly suggested to be listed as an essential complementary pain treatment in ED around Malaysia in order to improve the quality of service. Keywords Patient Perception, Acupuncture, Complementary Treatment, Pain, Emergency department.