Family physicians' level of knowledge, attitudes and behaviours about herb-drug interaction

The aim of this study is to evaluate the behaviors, attitudes and knowledge levels of family physicians working in Turkey about herbal product-drug interaction and to raise awareness on the subject. This cross-sectional and descriptive study included 345 family physicians. The population of the study consisted of research assistants receiving full-time and part-time family medicine specialty training, general practitioners and specialists working as family physicians in Turkey. The research was conducted online via Google Forms between 15.08.2023-23.01.2024. The questionnaire consisted of 45 questions, including the first section asking for personal information, the second section measuring the attitudes and behaviors of physicians about herb-drug interactions, and the third section including information questions about herb-drug interactions. IBM SPSS 20.0 package program was used for statistical analysis and p<0.05 was considered significant. Among the family physicians who participated in the study, 67% (n=231) had used herbal products at any point in their lives and 54.5% (n=188) did not recommend any herbal products to the patients they followed. The participants defined their level of knowledge about herbal product-drug interaction as "insufficient" by 57.7% (n=199), and the rate of receiving questions about herbal product-drug interaction from their patients as "sometimes" by 35.9% (n=124), 33.3% (n=115) answered "rarely" in the case of providing information about herbal product-drug interaction and 37.4% (n=129) answered "always" in the case of evaluating patients for herbal product-drug interaction during follow-up. It was found that 80.3% (n=277) of family physicians did not encounter herbal product-drug interactions during their practice, and 14.7% (n=10) of those who encountered herbal product-drug interactions reported adverse effects. 86.4% (n=298) of the participants reported that they would like to receive training on herbal products. As a result, family physicians use herbal products at a high rate and recommend them to their patients at a lower rate, think that patients should be informed and evaluated in terms of herbal product-drug interaction, and want to receive training on herbal products due to their insufficient level of knowledge on the subject. Keywords: Family physicians, Rational drug use, Herb-drug interaction, Phytotherapy, Traditional medicine