At St. Michael’s Hospital all staff have access to Natural Medicines, “the most authoritative resource available on dietary supplements, natural medicines, and complementary alternative and integrative therapies” 1

Many staff members at St. Michael’s greatly appreciate access to this resource when patients are interested in taking (or already taking) alternative treatments via herbs, supplements, and food. Patient education handouts are available to print out in English, Spanish and French.

Here are a few of the tools you can find in Natural Medicines:

Interaction Checker: This powerful tool allows you to quickly screen for interactions between natural medicines, including multi-ingredient supplements and conventional medications. Plus, get evidence-based interaction ratings to help you determine which interactions are the most clinically significant.
Effectiveness Checker: The Effectiveness Checker tells you which natural medicines and integrative therapies work and which do not for specific medical conditions. Enter any medical condition or symptom and get a report showing the Effectiveness Rating for natural medicines and integrative therapies that have been scientifically studied.
Adverse Effects Checker: The Adverse Effects Checker shows you which natural medicines have the potential to cause specific adverse effects. Select any symptom or side effect and get a list of natural medicines that have evidence to suggest that they might cause that side effect.

There are many more tools to check out as well. To find out more, click here.

Access the resource from work or home through the SMH intranet homepage under “Library Search” < “Search a Topic (Databases)”. Contact us at hslibrary@smh.ca if you have any questions.

Works Cited:

1. Welcome To The Natural Medicines Research Collaboration [document on the Internet]. Natural Medicines; 2017 [cited 2017 Jan 30]. Available from  Naturalmedicines.therapeuticresearch.com.