---

A cross sectional study on the practise of self-medication among 2nd year medical and dental students

---

Original Article

Author Details : Nagesh Raju G., Manjunath S.M., Dharmaraj B

Volume : 3, Issue : 4, Year : 2016

Article Page : 165-168

Suggest article by email

Get Permission

---

Abstract

Introduction: Most of the common health ailments are treated by general population themselves without medical supervision, which is termed as self-medication. There are potential risks of self-medications like adverse drug reaction, disease aggravation, drug dependence, drug resistance etc. The undergraduate medical and dental students have easy access to information from various sources to self-diagnose and self-medicate. So, we conducted the study to assess the practice of self-medication among 2^nd year medical and dental students studying at Basaveshwara Medical College & S.J.M. Dental College, Chitradurga.
Materials: This was an observational, cross-sectional study based on a semi-structured, pre-validated questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used for analysing the data. The result was analysed using the software Microsoft Excel sheet.
Results: The study included 172 students (medical & dental), out of which 57.5% were females and 42.4% were males. 82.5% of participants had practised self-medication at some point in their life. 85% felt that there was no need to consult physician for simple ailments. The source of information for self-medication was pharmacist (61.6%), followed by google & internet (46.5%), senior (32.5%). Most common conditions for which self-medication was practiced included cold (93%), cough (85%), diarrhea (80%). Drugs commonly used for self-medication included Paracetamol (94%), Antacids (59%), Antibiotics (41%).
Conclusions: Our study revealed that there is a high prevalence of self-medication among medical and dental students. We as the healthcare professionals need to raise the awareness regarding the ill effects of self-medication among undergraduates and also stress on various measures to curb its growing trend.

Keywords: Self-medication, Medical, Dental, Questionnaire, Over the counter drug

How to cite : Nagesh Raju G., S.m. M, Dharmaraj B, A cross sectional study on the practise of self-medication among 2nd year medical and dental students. Indian J Pharm Pharmacol 2016;3(4):165-168

This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.