Factors causing self-medication in nursing students

Abstract

Introduction: Self-medication is the use of medications on one's own initiative to alleviate or cure some ailment, this practice may have positive points in favor of the economy and demand of health centers worldwide, however, the negative consequences are more relevant, such as future antibiotic resistance, misdiagnosis or treatment and combinations of drugs that can cause adverse reactions. Objective: To identify the factors that cause self-medication in nursing students of the Technical University of Ambato. Methods: A quantitative research with a non-experimental, cross-sectional design was carried out. A total of 183 nursing students from the fifth, sixth and seventh semesters of the Technical University of Ambato participated in the study. A 23-item questionnaire with a validity of 97.2% and reliability of 86.3% was applied. Results: 97.3% prevalence of low frequency self-medication (80.9%) was reported, where the main reason for self-medication was the consideration of mild symptoms with 82% and the most commonly used drugs were analgesics with 94.5%. Conclusions: There is a high prevalence of self-medication in nursing students, which leads to take informative measures to avoid or decrease this percentage in students and population in the future.

Development and psychometric properties of a self-medication behavior inventory

“…For this purpose, a logical or deductive partitioning method was used, which included literature review and evaluation of the indicators of the construct to be measured. The literature review highlighted four dimensions critical to self-medication behavior: Avoidance (Sharif et al, 2012 ; Castillo Martínez and Pérez-Acosta, 2021 ; Zambrano Barriga and Cusme Torres, 2023 ), Prevention (Zheng et al, 2023 ), Influence (Burak and Damico, 2000 ; Anghel and Craciun, 2013 ; Zeb et al, 2022 ) and Attitude (Krueger et al, 2005 ; Parihar et al, 2018 ; Sulistyowatia et al, 2022 ).…”

“…The dimension of Avoidance, influenced by the work of Zambrano Barriga and Cusme Torres ( 2023 ), reflects the tendency to evade discomfort or pain, a noted motivator for self-medication. This dimension is rooted in the principle of aversive behavioral control, where behaviors are aimed at avoiding aversive stimuli, with reinforcement coming from accompanying safety signals (Domjan and Grau, 2015 ).…”

“…However, it also has significant health risks (Camargo Rubio, 2023 ). Among these are bacterial resistance and inadequate diagnostics (Zambrano Barriga and Cusme Torres, 2023 ), lack of knowledge of adverse reactions and dangerous interactions (Ekor, 2014 ), as well as drug dependence or abuse (Ruiz, 2010 ; Pokida and Zybunovskaya, 2023 ). In addition to the risks, there is a high prevalence of self-medication (Alves et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Due to the existing risks in the behavior of self-medication and its prevalence, it is relevant to identify the variables that contribute to explaining the behavior of self-medication. In this sense, it has been suggested that both pain avoidance (Zambrano Barriga and Cusme Torres, 2023 ) and better performance in some capacity (Rabiner et al, 2009 ) are some of the causes of self-medication. In the same direction, there are reports that indicate that workers may adopt risky behaviors in self-medication in order to avoid pain or increase their productivity (Castillo Martínez and Pérez-Acosta, 2021 ).…”

“…In this sense, pain avoidance is a cause of self-medication (Castillo Martínez and Pérez-Acosta, 2021 ; Zambrano Barriga and Cusme Torres, 2023 ). Avoidance operate as a form of aversive behavioral control, where the individual emits a response that avoids the aversive stimulus.…”