OBJECTIVES: To describe student pharmacists’ attitudes towards herbal medicines and to assess questionnaire psychometrics.

METHODS: All students (n=429) at a public college of pharmacy were invited to participate. Seven items assessed students’ attitudes towards herbal medication use on a six-point scale with options ranging from do not agree to strongly agree. Ten items collected demographic data. Students were categorized as those who had not yet learned about herbal medicines and those who had. Median attitudinal scores were compared using Mann-Whitney U tests and descriptive statistics were calculated as appropriate. The polytomous Rasch model was used to ascertain item validity. Item polarity, model fit, and reliability were assessed. An alpha of 0.05 was selected a-priori RESULTS: A total of 324 students completed the survey (76% response rate). Respondents had a mean age of 25.5 (SD=4.5), most were female (59%) and did not report use of herbal medicines by themselves or family members (57%). Most participants worked in a community pharmacy (45%) and had access to herbal medication information (53%). Students who had learned about herbal medicines agreed less strongly that herbal medications are efficacious (p<0.01). Students were not confident in their ability to recommend or educate patients on herbal medicines, and strongly agreed that an elective course on herbal medicines would be useful for improving competency to educate patients. All items had a positive correlation, and item fit statistics were within an acceptable range (outfit mean-square=0.73-1.30, Z-standardized residuals=-1.9-2.0). Item reliability was 0.99. Person reliability was 0.08. There were four significant items gaps (p<0.02) suggesting more items need to be added.

CONCLUSIONS: Participants reported that they were not confident to recommend or educate patients on the use of herbal medicines. Further work is needed to refine this attitudinal questionnaire and to remove uninformative items.