Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2008 Jun 15;72(3):59.
doi: 10.5688/aj720359.

Conceptual development of a measure to assess pharmacists' knowledge of herbal and dietary supplements

Hsiang-Wen Lin  1 , A Simon Pickard, Gail B Mahady, Nicholas G Popovich
Affiliations

Conceptual development of a measure to assess pharmacists' knowledge of herbal and dietary supplements

Hsiang-Wen Lin et al. Am J Pharm Educ. .

Abstract

Objectives: To describe the conceptual development of a measure for assessing pharmacist knowledge of herbal and dietary supplements.

Methods: A standardized approach to constructing a multiple-choice competency examination following 8 pre-specified criteria (eg, specifying the target spectrum of herbal and dietary supplements) was used to create an item bank. The quality of each item was evaluated by 5 herbal and dietary supplement content experts based on specific criteria in 3 rounds of review.

Results: From 122 initial items, 56 items were retained for the item bank representing 4 content areas: efficacy/effectiveness, safety, drug-supplement interactions, and regulation. The experts tended to agree that the constructed items represented a wide range of difficulty.

Conclusion: The initial development of a conceptually based item bank/measure of pharmacist herbal and dietary supplement knowledge lays the groundwork for a large-scale validation study. The measure should be useful as a standalone tool and as a component of a knowledge, attitude, and behavior survey for the assessment of pharmacist traits related to herbal and dietary supplements.

Keywords: dietary supplements; herbal supplements; knowledge; pharmacists; standardized examination.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Item development process of the knowledge measure.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Eisenberg DM, Davis RB, Ettner SL. Trends in alternative medicine use in the United States, 1990-1997: results of a follow-up national survey. JAMA. 1998;280:1569–75. - PubMed
    1. Wold RS, Lopez ST, Yau CL, et al. Increasing trends in elderly persons' use of nonvitamin, nonmineral dietary supplements and concurrent use of medications. J Am Diet Assoc. 2005;105:54–63. - PubMed
    1. Kaufman DW, Kelly JP, Rosenberg L, et al. Recent patterns of medication use in the ambulatory adult population of the United States: the Slone Survey. JAMA. 2002;287:337–44. - PubMed
    1. Tindle HA, Davis RB, Phillips RS, et al. Trends in use of complementary and alternative medicine by US adults: 1997-2002. Alternative Ther Health Med. 2005;11:42–9. - PubMed
    1. Miller LG, Harris HA, Jackson EA, et al. White paper on herbal products. American College of Clinical Pharmacy. Pharmacotherapy. 2000;20:877–91. - PubMed

Substances

LinkOut - more resources