Circumstances leading to self-diagnosis and self-medication in the Municipality of Marabá (State of Pará, Brazil)

Abstract

The theme medication/self-diagnosis presents contrary opinions about what is right or wrong, in addition to being scarce the quantitative studies with the purpose to clarify the causes of these two dangerous practices. For both, the objective of this study was to identify the causes that influence the self-diagnosis and medication, as well as analyze failures in public assistance in health, which can be promoting the avoidance of the patient to search for an alternative medicine, evidencing the risk that this done can promote. It was a descriptive and cross-sectional study, of qualitative nature, carried out in all health centers in the urban area of Marabá (Pará State, Brazil), through the application of forms and having the data analyzed and tabulated, making use mainly of Chi-square statistical test. The results showed that education is not directly related to the medication, which before was vacant in literature, but the main result highlighted expressed that the motivation for the choice of ingesting medication without prescription, are the difficulties encountered in SUS, the poor quality of care and failures in the relationship doctor patient of the public health service.