Cupping Therapy (Al-Hijamah): Healthcare Professionals' Controversial Beliefs Before and After Training Program, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Background: Cupping is a complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) technique that has been widely used by healthcare professionals and the people since ancient times.

Objective: This study assessed controversial beliefs and conceptions concerning cupping (Al-Hijamah) among health professionals before and after training program.

Methods: Healthcare professionals (n=439, 226 physicians, 108 physiotherapists and 105 nurses) were exposed to an intensive training program conducted by National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The participants completed a 23-item self-administered questionnaire before and after an intervention program. The questionnaire was reliable for the assessment of controversial beliefs and conceptions about cupping therapy.

Results: Male participants constituted 64.7% and Saudi subjects were 38.3%. The rest of the non-Saudi participants had 16 different nationalities. All participants stated one or more controversial beliefs before intervention (range = 1-16) and post-intervention (0-4) with a variable proportion of participants revealing inconsistent reduction or modifiability in controversial beliefs and conceptions about cupping therapy. A proportion of participants (65.2%) specified no controversial beliefs after intervention. The belief that improved most was "Hand washing is the key component of infection control" stated by 61.3% of participants.

Conclusion: Using targeted training programs, most of healthcare professionals' false beliefs about cupping (Al-Hijamah) therapy are modifiable. Further high quality research are needed to explore the false beliefs of cupping therapy among healthcare professionals and practitioners together with availability of standard clinical practice guidelines of cupping therapy at clinical settings around the world.