Sneha Sura, Amrita Chabria, Sujit S. Sansgiry
Objectives: The objective of this study was to assess and compare pharmacy students’ knowledge and attitude towards herbal medications. This study further examined factors associated with attitude formation towards herbal medications and contrasted it by the year students were enrolled in the program. Methods: A prospective, cross-sectional study was conducted by distributing a pre-validated instrument to doctor of pharmacy students at a University. A 15-item questionnaire was used to measure knowledge (1 = true and 2 = false) and 16-item questionnaire for determining the attitude (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree) towards herbal medications. Descriptive analyses, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and tukey’s test were conducted to evaluate the pharmacy students’ knowledge and attitude towards herbal medications. The logistic regression model was used to determine factors associated with attitude towards herbal medications. Results: Of the 175 surveys used, majority (77%) believed their knowledge of herbal medications was insufficient to practice as a pharmacist. The average herbal medications knowledge score was 9.3±1.8. Students in the third (10.0±1.4) and fourth (9.6±1.2) year had higher herbal knowledge scores compared to second year (8.6±2.1) students. However, the average attitude towards herbal medications was similar across all groups, second (3.1±0.4), third (3.0±0.4), and fourth year (2.9±0.4), respectively. Almost 92% of students reported a need to learn more about herbal medications. Students with higher herbal knowledge scores had positive attitude towards herbal medications (OR = 1.27; 95% CI: 1.03 – 1.57). Conclusions: Students had inadequate knowledge about herbal medications and desired for more information. Higher knowledge leads to a positive attitude towards herbal medications among pharmacy students. With the increasing use of herbal medications in US, there may be a greater need to educate pharmacy students through didactic courses in this area to enhance their knowledge and attitude.
