Prevalence, practice and pattern of self-medication among medical students in Al-Iraqia Medical College, Baghdad, Iraq

Abstract

Introduction: Self-medication is increasingly being a common practice worldwide more so amongst the medical students. This study aimed to assess the prevalence of self-medication among the medical students and to describe the self-reported practice and pattern of medication by undergraduate medical students at Al-Iraqia University in Baghdad city. Methods: This study is a cross-sectional survey. Out of 440 students enrolled, 400 (>90%) responded. The data was collected using self-administrated pretested questionnaire and then analyzed using SPSS version 18.0. Results: During the last one year preceding the study, 85% of respondents using self-medication mostly among single students (98.2%), aged 20+ years old (56.5%), in fourth academic level (27.1%), living with their families (73.2%) and of non-sufficient income (54.7%). The main indication for seeking self-medication include headache as reported by 83.8% followed by cold and cough and fever 80.3% and pain elsewhere in body (70%). Drugs commonly used for self-medication included analgesics 89.4% and anti-pyretic 67.9%. Minor illness was the most common reason for self-medication (80.6%). 56.8% and 45% of respondents follow pharmacist and textbooks respectively as a source of information in practicing self-medication. Most of respondents practiced self-medication for themselves (57.9%) and for both; themselves and their family members (45%). Some level of awareness was reported among non-practiced self-medication students; 60% of them were afraid from risk of adverse reaction of drugs. Conclusion: Self-medication is broadly practiced among medical students in this College. Therefore, there is need to improve the medical educational program to raise the awareness level regarding the advantage and disadvantages of self-medication to ensure safe usage of drugs.

Medical students' perceptions of coronavirus disease

“…The assessment of the sources of information used by medical students to learn about COVID-19 revealed an expected massive reliance on mass media, followed by social media, whereas few of them use the medical search engine or articles as a source of information. This is in accordance with other studies when the major source of information for medical students was TV & radio [13], and social media [10,15,20]. We also found reliable sources of information, like journals and articles, medical search engines, and webinars, are less used, even within a subpopulation that should be more familiar than the public with credible medical websites.…”

“…These findings are more or less similar to those of other studies [10,13,21]. Nonetheless, the usage of those information sources among Sudanese medical students is much lower than that reported in other studies [10,13,15,20]. The current study showed a significant correlation between the source of information and the level of knowledge, which agrees with other studies [15,21].…”

“…Moreover, stigmatization is much lower among Sudanese students, with only one-third of them preferring to keep it secret if one of their family members became infected with COVID-19, which is much less than that reported in other studies [10,20]. Only 28.5% of the students wouldn't express fear of the diagnostic and therapeutic approaches in the local hospitals in case they were infected with COVID-19; this is comparable to the 41.9% reported in a Jordanian study [10].…”

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“…Our sample was consisting of 505 medical undergraduate students. Our study shows students have 85% very good knowledge towards covid-19 which is done during early phase of lockdown (25 th march 2020 to 19 th May 2020) which is in line with other previous studies 13,14 .…”

Knowledge and attitude towards COVID-19 among adult people in Bangladesh: evidence from an online survey

“…Nevertheless, this study finding indicates that over the period the knowledge and positive attitudes levels have increased among the adult people in Bangladesh. However, the knowledge level among the adult people in Bangladesh is comparable to Ethiopia (76%) [40], Saudi Arabia (80%), and Pakistan (80%) [41], and India (70%) [42], but lower than observed in the Philippines (92%) [43] and Iraq (92%) [44]. These differences in knowledge across the countries might be because of differences in populations and tools of examination to assess knowledge about COVID-19.…”