Teaching Drug Interactions to Complementary and Alternative Medicine Students

Abstract

A drug interaction occurs when a patient's response to a drug is modified by food, nutritional supplements, formulation excipients, environmental factors, other drugs, or disease. An interaction can either increase or decrease the effectiveness and/or the side effects of a drug, or it can create a new side effect not seen before. Interactions between drugs (drug-drug interactions) are the commonest and may be either beneficial or harmful. Drug interactions are avoidable and knowing how drug interactions occur, recognizing them when they occur, and knowing how to manage them is an important part of clinical practice. The main objective of learning pharmacology and drug interactions by the CAM students is the integration between the two systems of medicine and as far as the use of medicines are concerned, knowledge of pharmacology and its basic principles are most essential in understanding the adverse reactions and drug interactions that can hamper the integrating of the two systems of medicine as such outcomes will produce doubts and lack of confidence in the end-users.