Abstract

Background: Herbal medicine is a complementary alternative medicine that is commonly used among the population. The use of herbal medicine is growing, especially in the rural areas. Herbal medicine involves several plants extracts that contain compounds which in turn have therapeutic effect. The aim of the study was to assess the characteristics of herbal medicine users and associated factors.
Methods: This is descriptive cross-sectional survey-based study that was conducted on patients who were admitted to the Internal Medicine Department. The survey used in this study included questions to investigate characteristics of patients as well as their uses of herbal medicine and associated factors. Analyzing data were performed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 18.
Results: Several characteristics were associated with using herbal medicine including gender (p = 0.002), education level (p = 0.001), main diagnosis (p = 0.001), and fast food consumption (p = 0.01). Predictors of using herbal medicine was female gender (p = 0.001), low education (p = 0.02), fibromyalgia (p = 0.04), spinal pain (p = 0.007), headache (p = 0.03), inflammatory bowel disease (p = 0.002), and fast food abstinent (p = 0.008).
Conclusion: Moderate percent of patients from the Internal Medicine Department were using herbal medicine, the associated characteristics were female gender, lower education, specific diagnosis, and fast food abstinent.

Key words: Herbal medicine, Users, Factors