ArticlePharmacy practice
Community pharmacists' use, perception and knowledge on dietary supplements: a cross sectional study.
Article in Pharmacy practice. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Pharmacists' Management of Urinary Tract Infection Symptoms in Community Pharmacy: Counseling Practices and Attitudes Toward Antibiotic Therapy.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Community Pharmacists' Knowledge, Attitudes, and Readiness to Provide Counseling on Food Supplements-A Scoping Review.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Community pharmacists' knowledge, attitudes, and counseling practices regarding muscle-building supplements in Saudi Arabia: a cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Empowering Patient Safety: Assessment of Adverse Drug Reaction Knowledge and Practice Among Pharmacy Professionals.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Community pharmacists' knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding counselling on vitamins and dietary supplements in Malaysia: A study on complementary medicines.Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy · 2024Article
- The knowledge and attitudes of pharmacists related to the use of dietary supplements: An observational study in northeastern Italy.Preventive medicine reports · 2022Article
- Nutraceuticals for Complementary Treatment of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children: A Perspective from Their Use in COVID-19.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Analysis of Dietary Supplements Among Pharmacists: A Promising Outlook from Yazd, Iran.Journal of research in pharmacy practiceArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
backgroundPharmacists are commonly tasked with recommending the appropriate dietary supplement and advising the patients of their correct and safe use. Previous research, conducted on pharmacy students, showed that they did not always use the evidence based sources of information, with personal use identified as a significant predictor influencing the decision to recommend a supplement.
objectivesTo compare use, perceptions and knowledge of dietary supplements of pharmacists with different years of work experience and to explore factors that could influence their recommendation of supplements.
methodsA questionnaire based cross-sectional study was conducted on Croatian community pharmacists in September 2017. The questionnaire explored pharmacists' demographic characteristics, use, perceptions and knowledge of dietary supplements. Pharmacists (N=102) were divided in two groups based on their work experience: P0 (<10 years) and P1 (≥10 years).
resultsAll included pharmacists had high knowledge scores without differences between groups (P0=10, IQR 9-12 vs P1=11, IQR 9-12, expressed as median and interquartile range (IQR), p=0.275). Less experienced pharmacists perceived there was less research conducted on the dietary supplements compared to their more experienced counterparts (P0=1, IQR 1-2 vs P1=2, IQR 2-3, expressed as median and interquartile range, p<0.001). Groups differed in sources used when choosing the appropriate supplement with P0 using higher quality sources such as systematic reviews in comparison to P1 (32.1% vs 8.7%, p=0.004). Pharmacists' decision to recommend a dietary supplement was influenced by their personal use (odds ratio 0.216, 95%CI 0.068:0.689, p=0.01) and work experience (odds ratio 0.154, 95%CI 0.045:0.530, p=0.003).
conclusionsPharmacists did not use the high quality sources when recommending dietary supplements and their decision to recommend the supplement was not based on objective evaluation of evidence. Further education about the practice of evidence-based pharmacy is necessary, with special emphasis on senior pharmacists who might have missed that aspect during their formal education.
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