Abstract

COMPARISON OF KNOWLEDGE ATTITUDE & PRACTICE OF SELF-MEDICATION AMONG MBBS, BDS & BSC NURSING STUDENT IN THE NORTHERN STATE OF INDIA. A DESCRIPTIVE CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Rupendra K. Bharti, Joginder S. Pathania, Vikas Sood, *Pratima Koshewara and Tankeshwar Dewangan

Abstract

Aim: To Compare the awareness of self-medication among MBBS, BDS & BSc Nursing Student in the Northern state of India. Methods: The study was a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out at Indira Gandhi Medical College, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India. Total of 359 students was enrolled in this study. The majority of the students were females. SPSS v23 was used for descriptive analysis with a chi-square test to find any association. Result: we observed that, more than 74% of participants aware of OTC drugs and 45-64% participants self-medicated themselves. Most of our student didn’t agree that self-medication saves time to see a doctor and >73% of all participants agreed that self-medication may produce a hazardous effect in the future. We also observed that most of our students check the expiry of drugs before purchasing or consuming but the consumption of cross expiry OTC drugs was also quite higher. Among BSc Nursing student OTC use of Benzodiazepines (71.83%), respiratory drugs (73.71%), multivitamins (48.3%) and GIT medication (62.44%) was higher as compared to MBBS & BDS students. Among MBBS student OTC used of antibiotics was 60.64% while NSAIDs commonly consumed by BDS students. Conclusion: The practice of self-medication is quite prevalent among medical undergraduates. It clearly indicates the careless nature of health among these students. It is advocated that early awareness of self-medication among medical undergraduate could reduce the prevalence of unethical use of OTC drugs and dispensing of drugs should be more restrictive to overcome this pattern of practice.

Keywords: Self-Medication, Medical, Undergraduates, Prevalence, Over the counter, Drugs.