PELAYANAN KEFARMASIAN ATAS PERMINTAAN OBAT BAHAN ALAM UNTUK MENGATASI HIPERTENSI DI APOTEK WILAYAH SURABAYA
Daftar Isi:
- Medicines made from herbs have been widely reported as safe due to its nature. Despite that, it can cause side effects. Although natural medicines can be used for self-medication, its use for treatment chronic conditions such as hypertension should be taken into consideration. To enable providing appropriate information, pharmacy staff should have proper knowledge about natural medicines. This study aimed to investigate the availability of natural medicine for hypertension in pharmacies, information collected by pharmacy staff in patient assessment, types of recommendation and information related to medicines given by pharmacy staff, as well as their knowledge of medicine safety. Scenario of specific product requests was presented by a simulated patient to 90 randomly selected pharmacies in Surabaya. The drug requested was not available in all visited pharmacies. Sixteen (17,8%) pharmacy staff recommended drugs, non-drugs, and referrals to doctors. Only two (2,2%) pharmacy staff assessed patient simulated. Drug information was provided by pharmacy staff about dosage and time of use. Fifteen (16,7%) pharmacy staff answered that the meaning of logo on the packaging was “fitofarmaka” and the most common pharmacy staff answered it was considered safe. In conclusion, the availability of “fitofarmaka” products for hypertension in pharmacies was very lacking. Lack of knowledge about natural medicines may contribute to limited information collected regarding the patient and information provided related to natural medicine products.