Coun 6743 Week 2
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School
Walden University *
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Course
6743
Subject
Medicine
Date
Apr 3, 2024
Type
docx
Pages
2
Uploaded by amariat
The National Center for Complimentary and Integrative Health (NIH) is an easy to navigate website which is up to date within a month and provides great features such as topic overviews before showing users more in depth and specialized information (2024). The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Information for Consumers and Patients website is more difficult to navigate and not as up to date. Both websites only present specific information about their category of medicine. The FDA presents traditional medicine while the NIH presents alternative medicine.
Pros and Cons of Each Website
The NIH is easy to navigate, organized effectively, and has been updated within the past month (2024). All these factors make it an impressive and easy to use website to find information
on “alternative medicine”. One of the cons I noticed for this website is that there is a lack of information on commonly prescribed traditional medicine – such as diazepam. My thoughts on what could improve this website is if they included information about traditional medicine’s interactions with alternative medicine (if they would not like to include a broad overview of traditional medicine).
The FDA is less clearly organized than the NIH website (2023). There is also more information in different formats (such as articles versus overviews) that can make it confusing to the public. Another example is that when I search for a phrase in the NIH website, it prepopulates several options but highlights a first overview of the search term, before showing me more complex information. There is no feature like this on the FDA website. One benefit of the FDA website is the immense information about traditional medicine, but there is a lack of alternative medicine and/or substances/treatments not FDA approved. Another issue with the FDA website is that it has not been updated since December – which while this may seem like a short period of time – three months can leave a lot of room for new information in the world of medicine.
Site Sources of Information
The NIH gives references on each of its information pages to organizations such as the NCCIH Clearinghouse which is a federal research database, the National Library of Medicine, or
the FDA (2024). In contrast, the FDA does not give references to information sources – presumably because they are a research-based organization (2023). The FDA does, however, give
credit for photos used on their website to different clinicians or research articles that the photos are pulled from. Comparatively, both organizations use relevant and research-based references. The one consideration is the NIH could give broader information that one organization may simply not have access to when sourcing within their own research data bank.
Academic Credibility
The FDA (2023) and the NIH (2024) present different types of medicine which makes them difficult to directly compare. Another difference between the two regarding academic credibility is that the FDA only utilizes its own research on their website while the NIH presents information from a variety of reputable sources (including the FDA). I would not cite either
website as being more academic or credible than one another. I would encourage everyone as counselors to a wide range of people to utilize both websites to meet clients’ needs for information on both traditional and alternative medicines. The lacking aspect of both websites is information on interactions between traditional and alternative medicines which will require the utilization of another resource.
Differences Between Sites for Diazepam
The NIH does not have any information regarding diazepam when searched for in the website (2024). For an example, I did search “cupping” and it populated first an overview of this alternative medicine as recommended introductory overview to this research topic. That is then followed by many other articles and information about cupping. The FDA website first pulls up a
wide variety of articles starting with crimes and danger related diazepam (2023). Farther down the results page there is a general overview of diazepam injections and nasal spray.
Summary
The FDA and the NIH both present a wide variety of information on their category of medicine. The NIH website is more user-friendly and up to date with useful futures like quick topic overviews (2024). The FDA utilizes its own research to provide articles and information about traditional medicine. Neither website provides interactions between traditional and nontraditional medicine which is necessary to provide holistic counseling care.
References
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. (2024). Herbs at a Glance. U.S Department of Health and Human Services.
https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/herbsataglanceLinks to an external site.
U.S Food and Drug Administration. (2023). Information for Consumers and Patients.
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/resources-drugs/information-consumers-and-patients-
drugsLinks to an external site.
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