Exploring knowledge and attitudes towards counselling about vitamin supplements in Jordanian community pharmacies

Abstract

The use of multivitamins within a pharmaceutical setting has been the subject of considerable debate.ObjectiveThis research aimed to provide a platform for assessing and evaluating knowledge, attitudes and professional practices of Jordanian community pharmacists in counselling patients about the safe consumption of vitamins.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted between October 2009 and May 2010. Data collection was carried out using a 44-item semi-structured self-administrated questionnaire. Setting: Community pharmacies in Amman with target sample of 400 pharmacists.ResultsA total of 388 pharmacists participated in this study. The majority (77.8%) of pharmacists believed that a balanced diet is more achievable by eating healthily than by vitamins supplements. 78.1% of participants believed that vitamins deficiency would not shorten life spans, while 80.7% agreed that vitamin supplements could be toxic or might contain unlabelled harmful ingredients. Less than half of pharmacists were aware that some antioxidant vitamins have been verified to be of unproven value, or may even cause cancer. While over 80% of pharmacists would recommend vitamins on a regular basis without prescription, the majority agreed that counselling on vitamin supplements is part of their role in pharmaceutical care (93.3%), in addition to providing relevant information to other healthcare professionals (78.4%). Moreover, responses to specific knowledge questions, such as the interactions of vitamins with drugs or the recommended dietary allowance of vitamins for infants, children, and pregnant women, were negative. Furthermore, only a minority of pharmacists would recheck the accuracy of dose regimens in prescriptions and symptoms of true vitamins deficiency or would follow up patients to record any consequences of vitamins consumption.ConclusionsThe questionnaire revealed satisfactory awareness of community pharmacists about their role in counselling; however, further programmes to update their knowledge are mandatory to emphasise the importance of vitamin supplements as part of complementary medicine, and their exclusion from being considered as merely over the counter (OTC) products.

Community pharmacists’ knowledge, practices and beliefs about complementary and alternative medicine in Palestine: a cross-sectional study

“…Our data showed that the age of participant pharmacists ranged from 20 to 72 years (age was 35 ± 1.08 years; mean ± SD). The predominant age group being between 20 and 29 years (39.9%).Compared to the study conducted Jordan, the results regarding the range of age and years of experience of pharmacists were almost similar [29]. However, Kheir and his coauthors in Qatar found that the average age was higher, therefore they had higher years of experience [6].…”

Community Pharmacist’s Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices towards Vitamin Supplements in Al-Khobar Region, Saudi Arabia: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study

“…[9] Conversely, Saudi study showed that around 7.8% of contributors in the survey used vitamins as a source of alternative medicine and most of the participants were indisposed to share and deliberate such information with their medical doctor. [10] Another research, which included 161,808 healthy postmenopausal women in the Women’s Health Initiative program, discovered that those who used multivitamins had an analogous latent for mortality or emerging cardiovascular disease, cancer of the lung, colon/rectum, breast, and/or endometrium compared to those who did not use vitamins. [11] Reliable with these outcomes, other studies have proven weak substantiation to support the endorsement of multivitamins as antioxidant protection against cancers or cardiovascular disease.…”

Knowledge, attitudes, and practice of community pharmacists towards providing counseling on vitamins, and nutritional supplements in Saudi Arabia

“…The most popular of these studies include those conducted by Abadel [11] , who found that most of the community pharmacists do not feel confident in answering patient questions on vitamin and nutritional choices. Numerous studies have also illustrated the lack of knowledge or inadequate education in supplement products among pharmacists [12] – [14] . The lack of knowledge incapacitates pharmacists to provide informative consultation on nutritional and vitamin choices to the consumers.…”