SELF MEDICATION FREQUENCY AND ITS CONTRIBUTING FACTORS AMONG MEDICAL STUDENTS OF PRIVATE MEDICAL AND DENTAL COLLEGE OF PESHAWAR

Abstract

Objective:

Determine the frequency, practices and factors contributing to self-medication among medical students of private medical and dental college in Peshawar.

Materials and Methods:

Study design was cross-sectional descriptive and was conducted from January till May 2018.Study was conducted in private Medical and Dental College Peshawar. Total of 302 students 185 from medical and 117 from dental college were recruited after taking well-informed consent. Stratified sampling technique was used, from every year a proportional number of students were selected. Pilot study was done on a 10% sample size. Data was collected by face to face interviews. The sample size was calculated using Daniel 99 sample size formula. Data analyzed in SPSS.
 

Results:

The study showed that 256(84.76%) out of 302 students, practice self-medication while 46(15.23%) students did not practice. Results showed that Pain Killer was commonly used by students (59.93%) while herbals (1.78%) are the less common drugs used for self-medication. Headache was a common disease for which self-medication was practised by (48.67%) students of KMC and SBDC. The study shows that 29(14.94%) students out of 194 go for selfmedication  because they considered it time-saving while 42(21.64%) students practice self- medication due to the easy availability of drugs.

Conclusions:

Self-medication is common among medical students.. Headache, fever and pain were the common an illness for which self-medication was done. Painkillers, antibiotics and fever relieving medicines were used. Most common factors contributing to self-medication were that it's time-saving, easy to get medicines from shops and nonavailability of doctors when required.