Knowledge, attitudes and practices related to dietary supplements among a group of palestinian pharmacists

Abstract EN

-Objectives: The use of dietary supplements (DS) has increased, but due to a lack of related regulations, the prescription of DS depends on pharmacists’ knowledge.

Hence, this study aimed to evaluate the knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) related to DS among community-based pharmacists.

Methods: This study followed a crosssectional design targeting community pharmacists in West Bank, Palestine between September and December 2019.

Selected participants filled a self-administered questionnaire regarding their KAP related to DS.

The questionnaire contained 15 items: five questions on knowledge, seven on practices and three on attitudes.

Results: At a 90% response rate, 56.2% of the representative sample was female.

The participants’ experience was distributed almost equally across the categories of 0–5, 5–10 and over 10 years.

Additionally, a majority of the participants were the responsible pharmacist and/or the pharmacy owner.

Overall, the participants showed a moderate level of knowledge about DS with a mean score of 3.68 ± 1.1 out of 5; the correct answers ranged from 3.6% to 75.3% of the surveyed participants.

The practices with the highest frequencies were as follows: taking DS sometimes (79.9%), taking supplements from wellknown brands (56.2%), giving supplements to any patient (55.7%), selling supplements according to the participants’ knowledge (74.2%) and providing advice about supplements (73.2%).

The questions about the pharmacists’ attitudes towards DS market regulation revealed that more than half (52%) of the participants believed that it was suitable.

The association between knowledge score and practices was highly significant (P <0.001).

Conclusion: The study revealed that participants had moderate knowledge about DS.

Additionally, knowledge and practices were highly connected