Assessment of Knowledge, Attitude and Practices About Nutritional Supplements of the Staff and Students of Universiti Kuala Lumpur - Royal College of Medicine Perak Malaysia

Abstract

BACKGROUNDThe rate of usage of nutritional supplement has increased tremendously over the past decades. In Malaysia, the dietary supplement market is about US $17.30/month. AIMThe aim of this study was to determine the association of knowledge, attitude and practice about nutritional supplements with socio-demographic factors of the respondents. METHODSThis was a cross-sectional study, conducted in 2015 at UniKL-RCMP, Malaysia. Convenient sampling was used. The data extracted from the questionnaires, entered into the Microsoft Excel and were analysed by using the SPSS version 17. RESULTSOnly 43.1% respondents were graded as good knowledge level on nutritional supplement, while the majority (56.9%) respondents had a poor knowledge level. The knowledge on nutritional supplement were attained by majority from friends/families, doctors/pharmacists, television, articles, newspaper, reading books, radio and journal. The majority of study respondents was having a good healthy lifestyle. Most of the staff and students were non-smokers (99%), non-alcoholic (98%), supplement users (50.8%) and do regular exercise (85.8%). The correlation between Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) of nutritional supplements with gender, occupation and marital status were statistically significant. CONCLUSIONThis study shows that majority of nutritional supplement users were female, and also demonstrated that the participants had poor knowledge regarding nutritional supplement especially regarding cost, adverse reactions and evidence-based health benefit.

Dietary Supplements: A Survey Use, Attitudes and Knowledge Among IIUM Kuantan Students

“…The result was consistent with some studies in college from Tehran, Dammam, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates and South Europe (13,14,15,16). However, this result depicts a lower prevalence from previous studies where half of the respondents were DS users where the findings were reported from universities in India, Australia, China and also two universities from Malaysia (17,7,8,3,10).…”

“…Malaysia is one of the developing countries that reported was showing an increasing number of DS consumers, especially among adults as reported from the Malaysian Adult Nutrition Survey (MANS) 2014 (9). Consequently, the number also may increase among college students as evidenced by Al-Naggar and Chen (2011) and Haque et al (2016) (3,10). As the respondents are medical and health science students, they may prefer to consume a healthy diet from daily dietary intake instead of consuming DS.…”

“…Similarly, college students in Kuala Lumpur also presented the same outcomes (p=0.422). The researcher claimed that participants with good knowledge and positive attitudes are having a high tendency to purchase DS compared to participants who had low knowledge and poor attitudes towards DS (10).…”

“…universities in Kuala Lumpur with 43% and 50.8% (3,10), however, findings in one university in Ipoh reported that the usage was lower with 21.2% (11).…”

Community pharmacists' knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding counselling on vitamins and dietary supplements in Malaysia: A study on complementary medicines

“…Many pharmacists rely on their undergraduate education, which may not cover the intricacies involved in DS counselling adequately. 7 , 8 , 9 This issue is critical, as the contemporary healthcare landscape requires pharmacists to be well-versed in the interactions and contraindications of DSs, given the trend of consumer-led self-prescription. 8 …”