What is CAM?

“CAM” stands for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which covers a whole host of different therapies used traditionally and in the community.  There are a number of different formal definitions of CAM, as discussed below.

At the RCCM, we are working closely with many of the CAM professional bodies in the UK. Successive UK Governments have taken forward progress towards the regulation of the CAM professions in the interests of patient safety, as described in the CAM Regulation section.

An RCCM project in 2002 produced a thesaurus of terms and synonyms used within CAM, called the CISCOM Thesaurus. It is an extremely useful resource when searching for evidence or definitions. It can be downloaded by clicking the icon at the bottom of this page. For a more detailed description of the Thesaurus, click here.

There is no universally accepted definition for  Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). The National Institute of Health in the USA defines it as covering a range of health care approaches consisting of diverse medical, healthcare systems, practices and products which are normally not considered as part of conventional medicine. For more information see - 
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/whatiscam/ or http://img.thebody.com/nccam/whatis.pdf

The list of what is considered as being part of CAM changes as those therapies proven to be safe and effective become integrated into conventional healthcare.  

The National Institute of Complementary Medicine (NICM) in Australia provides a more inclusive definition incorporating historically used names such as alternative medicine, natural medicine and traditional medicine and emphasises the maintenance of wellness as well as the treatment of illnesses.  See http://www.nicm.edu.au/content/view/31/35/

The NICM definition uses the term complementary medicine as including the concepts of: 

• Complementary medicine (as in health and medical systems, practices and products not currently recognised as a part of conventional or mainstream western medicine practiced by medical doctors, nurses and allied health professionals);
• Alternative medicine (complementary medicine used in place of mainstream western medicine);
• Traditional medicine (indigenous medicines and practices); and
• Integrative medicine (complementary medicine used together with mainstream western medicine).

The NICM definition is an adaptation of the definition used by the USA National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM).