Knowledge, attitude, and utilization of herbal medicines by physicians in the Kingdom of Bahrain: A cross-sectional study

Herbal medicines are widely accepted as a primary source of healthcare due to their natural origin. However, this widespread popularity is counterbalanced with the lack of relevant research. The need to account for this deficiency motivated the present study which aims at (1) assessing physicians' knowledge and attitude toward herbal medicines, (2) determining to what extent herbal medicines are utilized by physicians in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and (3) highlighting the main factors that may facilitate or hinder the utilization of herbal medicines. A cross-sectional study was conducted to cover 96 physicians conveniently sampled from different departments among one public and two private hospitals. The main tool that was used to gather the required data was a self-administered questionnaire that has been specifically developed by the researchers to address the study objectives. The collected data were processed by the statistical package for social sciences SPSS (version 18). The study found that 64.6% of the participated physicians have generally basic knowledge on herbal medicines, and half of them acquired their knowledge from experience. Moreover, the results showed a tendency by physicians to use herbal medicines personally more frequently than prescribing them to the patients. Interestingly, the majority (91.7%) of the participants showed a desire to enhance their knowledge with regard to herbal medicines. They ascertained that the rational use of herbal medicines is hindered by poor quality control (65.6%) and limited information on their adverse events (62.5%). The physicians claimed that the availability of sufficient knowledge (68.8%) beside the low cost (66.7%) are major facilitating factors toward utilizing herbal medicines.