Informing the homeopathic practice for Turkish pharmacists: reviewing the example of Portuguese community pharmacies

Abstract

Portuguese pharmacists' attitudes towards their homeopathic practices highlighted the key elements for success in a field that is usually distant from traditional pharmaceutical education and practice. The present findings provide guidance for Turkish pharmacists willing to expand their professional scope and to embrace complementary medicines.

Barriers, knowledge, and training related to pharmacists’ counselling on dietary and herbal supplements: a systematic review of qualitative studies

“…Searches identified a total of 1695 items, of which 1385 were unique, and 1272 titles and abstracts were eliminated, leaving 113 full-text articles for further review. Of those, 94 were deemed ineligible, because they did not include qualitative data (n = 89), were conference abstracts (n = 3) or were irretrievable (n = 2), leaving a total of 19 articles that were included in this qualitative systematic review [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]. A PRISMA diagram can be found in Fig.…”

“…Many studies found that pharmacists' education fell short of providing them with a thorough understanding of DHSs [30,31,33,34,37,39,[41][42][43]. While some pharmacists expressed that they lacked a DHS education component in their pharmacy curricula [32,35,43], those that did receive training stated that they were not confident about their DHS knowledge [42,43].…”

“…Common limitations identified by authors of eligible studies Many included studies reported that a small sample size was identified as a limitation [31-33, 36, 40, 43, 45, 46]. The heterogeneity of the participants, with respect to factors such as age, sex, and educational background was also identified as a limitation across some included studies [40][41][42], as well as the fact that most participants were community pharmacists [30,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]. The geographic distribution of participants was another limitation; some of the studies were conducted in jurisdictions that may not be representative of all pharmacists' experiences country-wide [31,38,42,43].…”

“…To some extent, this review has helped to mitigate this bias, as we combined data from all eligible studies to identify the commonalities between pharmacists working in different regions of the world. Additionally, all but one study incorporated an interview component into their study design [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]; reliance on interview data is subject to its own biases which include the researcher misinterpreting participants' responses, or inadvertently influencing the participant to respond in a particular way. For example, if the interviewer is also a pharmacist, this may influence a participant's answer differently than if the interviewer was not a healthcare professional [46,47].…”

No smoke without fire

“…In another remarkable example of cultural crossfertilisation, a Portuguese-Turkish team led by Afonso Miguel Cavaco of Lisbon University, Portugal, working with colleagues from the University of Ankara, Turkey conducted a qualitative study of Portuguese pharmacists who use homeopathy, with a view to informing colleagues in Turkey. 6 In Turkey homeopathy is novel but increasing in popularity, and the subject of a new regulatory system. The Portuguese pharmacists who participated reported that they were grateful to be able to work in homeopathy and considered that specialised education was the most important factor for success; also that patients' attitudes are generally positive.…”