Doctors and those 'qualified' to practice 'conventional' western medicine, have been respected and revered society members throughout the modern era. Western medicine has provided relief and cures for many human ailments and those providing western medicinal treatment are trusted with personal information. Because the alternative care movement challenges the scientific paradigm of modern nursing and medicine, nurses and physicians can no longer ignore it. Healthcare executives once dismissed alternative medicine as New Age hocus-pocus but those days are gone, as the emerging paradigm shift through the postmodern era has seen alternative medicine growing in popularity.
Alternative medicine instigates a self-sufficiency lacking in western medicine.
Because there are dozens of contradicting therapies, you have to choose. In scientific medicine, the doctor is the protagonist. Alternative medicine also addresses the ethnic diversity that now exists in western society. For some Chinese Americans, treatments like acupuncture and herbal preparations are grounded in their culture and passed down from generation to generation. If anything, they may consider western medicine to be the alternative.