ABSTRACT
The growing use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by patients and medical providers across late modern societies is increasing the narratives available for constructing the meanings of health, health care and the occupational and organisational roles of health care providers. Although it might be tempting to assume that the infusion of CAM practices into conventional medical settings will seed the growth of new models of health care and delivery, the fact is that many of these CAM practices are grounded in ontological and epistemological assumptions that differ and in some cases oppose the assumptions of biomedicine (Coulter 2004).
