Evaluation of the Perspective of Healthcare Professionals on Complementary Medicine and Supplementary Foods in Turkey

The recognition of complementary medicine and its inclusion in treatment processes has shown a significant increase in the last decade worldwide. Employing methods of complementary medicine in preventive and complementary treatment becomes increasingly widespread in Turkey. Day by day, domestic and international manufacturers keep putting supplementary foods used in these methods on the Turkish market. However, research in Turkey on the consumption of supplementary foods is quite limited. Understanding the perspective of physicians on this issue to consume supplementary foods more consciously, investigating their roles in users' preferences of safe products, and determining the points of improvement in this field are important for health institutions to develop a perspective on this issue. This research was conducted with 282 people who are physicians from various fields of specialization or dieticians from different provinces of Turkey. Data were collected with a questionnaire from November to December 2018 (2 months). The activities of participants in the field of complementary medicine, their purposes of using supplementary foods, and their perspectives on product safety were investigated. It is seen that physicians and dieticians use supplementary foods for preventive or therapeutic purposes, and prefer the products of brands that they experience or trust while prescribing. The majority of participants do not find safe to supply supplementary foods outside the pharmacy