A qualitative study about self-medication in the community among market vendors in Fuzhou, China

Abstract

Despite government efforts to increase health care insurance and access in China, many individuals, regardless of insurance status, continue to engage in high levels of self-medication. To understand the factors influencing common self-medication behaviour in a community of food market venders in Fuzhou China, a total of 30 market venders were randomly recruited from six food markets in 2007. In-depth interviews were conducted with each participant at their market stalls by trained interviewers using a semi-structured open-ended interview protocol. Participants were asked broad questions about their health-seeking behaviours as well as their past experiences with self-medication and hospital care. ATLAS.ti was used to manage and analyze the interview data. The results showed that hospital-based health care services were perceived as better quality. However, self-medication was viewed as more affordable in terms of money and time. Other factors prompting self-medication included confidence in understanding the health problem, the easy accessibility of local pharmacies, and the influences of friends/peers and advertising. Three broad domains, attitude, cost, and effectiveness, were all seen to determine past decisions and experiences with self-medication. Interestingly, the effective management of self-medication via pharmacy resources raised particular concern because of perceived variation in quality. In conclusion, self-medication was found to be an important and common health-seeking behaviour driven by multiple factors. A sound and comprehensive public health system should systematically attend to these behaviours and the pharmacies where much of the behaviour occurs.

Why informally employed Chinese women do not go to the doctor

“…Qualitative data were analyzed using the constant comparative method (Lincoln and Guba, 2000). Early in the data analytic process, findings appeared to corroborate thematic findings of Wen et al (Wen et al, 2011 Table 2.…”

An Exploration in Women’s Perception of the Use of Over-the-Counter Drugs: A Content Analysis

“…28.9% of the participants in Tabiee et al's study (2012) counted the non-riskiness of these drugs as the reason behind their arbitrary drug use. In the study conducted by Wen et al (2011), fast recovery and ease of access to these drugs were counted as the main reason for OTC drug use (33). It appears that the belief in non-riskiness of OTC drug use and having experience in treating illnesses are among the main factors of arbitrary drug use, and it is of great significance to identify and analyze the factors contributing to arbitrary drug use among various groups of society so as to decrease self-medication and its impacts (28).…”

“…Also, in the study conducted by Wen et al (2011), the main reasons for self-medication were revealed to be lack of the need for visiting doctors for non-serious and minor illnesses such as cold, headache, fever, pain in the body, Indigestion, as well as fast recovery through self-medication (33).…”

“…Other studies have also yielded similar results. In a study, lack of enough time was mentioned as the reason for not visiting a doctor and using OTC drugs (28), and self-medication was identified more affordable in terms of money and time and also a cost-effective method by the participants in Wen et al's study (2011) (33). Arbitrary drug use was a common method among participants in the study conducted by Naves et al (2010) which was accounted for by participants' dissatisfaction with the necessity to wait for long hours in doctors' offices (30).…”

Starz-DRP as a Triaging Tool for Community Pharmacists: Perspectives and Expectations of Stakeholders

“…Even though the behaviour is noted to save money and time [4,5], it has potential to harm the people [6]. For example, misuse of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs is potentially noted to cause damage to the gastroduodenal mucosa via several mechanisms [7].…”