That's the terminology of the special interest group EUROCAM. Joe Public may well confuse CAM practitioners with CAM doctors and CAM health professionals, just as "complementary medicine" is commonly equated with "alternative medicine".

If #18 is true, then it's quite surprising the the "special interest group EUROCAM" has such broad influence, in multiple levels in the UK, in the US, in Canada, and Ireland (and likely elsewhere).

I'll stick with Marianne (BE)'s understanding and suggestion. After all, she's an NES who's particularly knowledgeable in such matters (and is a real treasure here because there are so many wild guesses that are thrown out).

Rominara, I can't figure out what you are thinking here. The US NIH (National Institutes of Health) and cancer.gov (aimed at us normal folk) also use "CAM practitioners". "Practitioner" is really not in common usage in AE otherwise: we usually say "professionals". I don't think there would be much risk of confusion with dual trained doctors, at least not in the US. Whether people would confuse complementary with alternative? I don't see why they would, if they gave it any thought at all. Lots of people don't always think about things that carefully, I'll grant you (myself included at times, alas, though I hope I do when it comes to healthcare).

I'm pretty sure that the regulation of CAM practitioners is up to the states in the US, chiropractors have to have a license everywhere, but many fields aren't covered by regulation, so I could see you might have to add something to CAM practitioner if it were important to stress that they were licensed to provide health services.

RE #21:

I didn't say "as such" that you challenged them. What you did say, and which I pointed out and challenged, was that the terms belong to a certain special interest group, which is incorrect.

RE #22. Perhaps you should have read the thread more carefully. It is clearly stated in #17 that naturopathy is only a part of CAM.