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Views and experiences of healthcare professionals towards the use of African traditional, complementary and alternative medicines among patients with HIV infection: the case of eThekwini health…

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, June 2015
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (80th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (85th percentile)

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8 X users

Citations

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9 Dimensions

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127 Mendeley
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Title
Views and experiences of healthcare professionals towards the use of African traditional, complementary and alternative medicines among patients with HIV infection: the case of eThekwini health district, South Africa
Published in
BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, June 2015
DOI 10.1186/s12906-015-0687-3
Pubmed ID
Authors

Manimbulu Nlooto

Abstract

Many patients with human immunodeficiency virus infection use traditional, complementary, and alternative medicines and other practices to combat the disease, with some also using prescribed antiretroviral therapy provided by the public health sector. This study aimed to establish the awareness of public sector biomedical health care providers on the use of traditional, complementary and alternative medicines by HIV-infected patients who also used highly active antiretroviral therapy, and to determine whether this was based on patients seen or cases being reported to them. Potential risks of interactions between the prescribed antiretroviral and non-prescribed medication therapies may pose safety and effectiveness issues in patients using both types of treatment. A descriptive cross-sectional study, using a researcher administered semi-structured questionnaire, was conducted from June to August 2013 at ten public sector antiretroviral clinics in five regional, three specialised and two district hospitals in eThekwini Health District, South Africa. Questionnaires were administered through face-to face interview to 120 eligible participants consisting of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and post-basic pharmacist assistants in HIV clinical practice. The results are presented as percent or proportion with standard error (SE), or as frequency. Ninety-four respondents completed the questionnaire, yielding a response rate of 78.3 %. Almost half (48/94) were aware of patients using African traditional herbal medicines, over-the-counter supplements, unnamed complementary Ayurveda medicines and acupuncture. Twenty-three of the 94 respondents (24.4 %) said they had consulted patients who were using both antiretroviral therapy and certain types of non-prescribed medication in the previous three months. Awareness among healthcare providers on patient use of traditional, complementary and alternative medicines was relatively high. Few respondents had seen patients who used mostly African traditional medicines, over-the counter supplements, and negligible complementary Ayurveda medicines and acupuncture, with caution being advised in the interpretation of the former. Further research is needed to investigate communication between healthcare providers and patients in this regard, and levels of acceptance of traditional, complementary and alternative medicines by biomedical health care workers in HIV public sector practice.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 8 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 127 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
South Africa 1 <1%
Unknown 126 99%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 18 14%
Researcher 18 14%
Student > Master 14 11%
Lecturer 7 6%
Student > Bachelor 6 5%
Other 26 20%
Unknown 38 30%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 24 19%
Nursing and Health Professions 17 13%
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science 11 9%
Social Sciences 8 6%
Engineering 4 3%
Other 19 15%
Unknown 44 35%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 8. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 June 2015.
All research outputs
#4,020,222
of 22,808,725 outputs
Outputs from BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
#768
of 3,630 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#51,225
of 266,602 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies
#12
of 85 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,808,725 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 82nd percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,630 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 78% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 266,602 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 80% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 85 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.