The role of pharmacy in integrating herbal medicine: From patient counseling to quality control of natural products

Abstract

Khalid Mohammed Refi*, Khaled Farhan Albusaysi, Turki Muteb Alharbi, Nader Farhan Albesisi, Rasha Mohammed Alghamdi, Munifah Homud Alharbi and Ayidh Saad Alharthi

The adoption of herbal medicine into the mainstream pharmacy practice is an increasing need, considering the fact that the use of natural products by patients has escalated alongside the use of conventional drugs. Pharmacists are crucial to the safe use of the products, evidence-based counseling, and quality control of herbal products. Nonetheless, a lack of knowledge, differences in the product quality, and inconsistencies in the regulations provide challenges to this integration. This paper discusses the knowledge, perceptions, and practices of the pharmacists in relation to herbal medicine and analyzes some of the current strategies of quality control. It is a synthesis of the evidence of surveys, systematic reviews, and laboratory studies done. Findings indicate that pharmacists are not very confident in herbal counseling, not well trained, and more often than not patients fail to inform pharmacists on their use of herbs. The quality assessment research indicates that herbal products sold in the market include adulteration, contamination, and low consistency in their potency. At the end of the paper, it is suggested to implement larger pharmacy curricula on natural products, the implementation of sophisticated methods of quality control, and the political regulations requiring standardized testing.