Prevalence, and health- and sociodemographic associations for visits to traditional and complementary medical providers in the seventh survey of the Tromsø study.

A considerable number of the participants in this study employed parallel health care modalities including visits to conventional, traditional, and complementary medicine providers. To offer patient-centered culturally sensitive health care that is tailored to the patients' treatment philosophy and spiritual needs, conventional health care providers need knowledge about, and respect for their patients' use of parallel health care systems.