Doctors Don’t Know Much about Herbal Medicines

Our local hospital has just posted an encouraging notice about the Integrative Medicine services it offers.  Included is the sentence “Talk to your family practitioner about how herbs can help your specific condition”.  Good luck with that!  I don’t imagine our local family doctors are much more knowledgeable about herbal medicines than those who recently completed a survey, as reported in the Drug and Therapeutic Bulletin. Of course, as this hospital is located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the local doctors may be more herb-conscious than most.

The survey on herbal medicines was conducted in January, using e-mails sent to a random selection of subscribers to the Bulletin.  Over 1,000 e-mails were sent, and 14% replied; 80% of them were physicians – mostly family doctors, some hospital doctors, and a few pharmacists.  Of these health care professionals, more than 85% rated themselves as “poorly informed” about herbal medications.  And they believed that 70% of the public had misplaced confidence in the power of herbal medicines.  This doesn’t speak well for the likely interactions between practitioner and patient.

Worse, perhaps, was the survey finding that only 13% of health professionals always asked patients if they were taking herbal medicines; more than half said they never or only occasionally asked.  This is important because of the possibly severe adverse interactions between prescription medications and herbal meds.  Obviously, health practitioners need to be better informed themselves about commonly used herbal medications, and be prepared to discuss these with their patients, if requested.