Evaluation of Knowledge and attitude of referred people to pharmacies in Rasht toward nutritional supplements

Background: Today, the average per capita consumption of supplements is increasing dramatically in the world. Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine the knowledge and attitudes of people about supplements and their consumption. Methods: This descriptive-analytical cross-sectional study was performed over a period of 6 months. One thousand two hundred and twenty people who referred to pharmacies in Rasht completed a questionnaire including demographic questions, knowledge and attitudes toward drug supplements. Results: The majority of the samples had poor knowledge related to the questionnaire questions and from the range of 0 to 9, a score of 5.14±2.36 was recorded for them. Also, the knowledge score was significant in terms of education, occupation, use of drug supplements, number of supplements and the reason for taking drug supplements, so that people with postgraduate education and higher, people who were health care related jobs and consumers of supplements had higher knowledge of medicine. Regarding the attitude towards drug supplements from 0 to 40, the score was 16.14±4.64 and 76.33% of the sample had a negative attitude towards drug supplements. According to the results, knowledge was inversely related to attitudes about drug supplements. Conclusion: Due to the poor knowledge of individuals and also a negative attitude towards drug supplements, It seems that need for public education is necessary to improve the level of knowledge and develop a culture of taking supplements.