A systematic review of community pharmacist practices in complementary medicine

ABSTRACT

Background: The people who use complementary medicines (CMs) believe that these medicines are safe and harmless. They could easily access CMs like herbal or traditional medicines in community pharmacies. Therefore, community pharmacists are important professionals in advising the safe choices of CMs and providing evidence-based information for customers to decrease adverse effects of CMs. Objectives: To systematically review knowledge, attitude, and practices of community pharmacists about CMs, and the factors associated with CM practices of dispensing, recommending and counseling patients, and answering the patients’ queries. Method: An electronic search was performed with four databases PubMed, Scopus, SpringerLink and ScienceDirect, from 1990 to 19th May 2022. The inclusion criteria were studies 1) about knowledge, attitude, and/or practices of community pharmacists about CMs, 2) written in English, 3) conducted with quantitative methods, and 4) able to retrieve full text. (AU)