Self medication among health professionals

Abstract

O presente estudo teve como objetivo identificar as evidências disponíveis na literatura sobre automedicação em profissionais da saúde. Realizouse revisão integrativa da literatura com buscas na Base de Dados de Enfermagem (BDEnf), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Embase, Literatura Latino-Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde (LILACS), Pubmed, SCOPUS, Web of Science, Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde Brasil (BVS) e no portal de periódicos Scientific Eletronic Library Online (SciELO). Foram selecionados 19 artigos que atenderam aos critérios de inclusão, sendo a maioria classificada com nível de evidência 6 (n=17). A análise dos artigos permitiu identificar que a automedicação é prática frequente e aceita entre profissionais da saúde, com destaque para a categoria médica, mencionados na maioria das publicações (n=8) e com as maiores prevalências. O consumo de fármacos que não exigem prescrição foi acentuado em farmacêuticos e profissionais de enfermagem. A prevalência mostrou-se maior em profissionais mais jovens e com mais escolaridade. O sintoma que mais estimulou a automedicação foi a dor de cabeça e os medicamentos mais usados foram os analgésicos. A análise realizada permitiu identificar lacunas relacionadas à compreensão dos aspectos laborais associados à automedicação e os efeitos dessa prática sobre a saúde dos profissionais. É necessário identificar medidas que controlem essa prática a fim de preservar a saúde dos trabalhadores da área da saúde.

Self-medication among health care workers in a tertiary hospital in Southern Nigeria: knowledge, attitude, and practices

“…5 HCWs have a greater tendency to engage in self-medication than the general population because of their privileged access to medical practitioner colleagues knowledge and access to medications in the workplace, a false sense of confidence in self-treatment, and a refusal to enter the "patient role." [6][7][8] Prevalence of self-medication was 77.6% among health professions in Malaysia, 5 67.5% in Ethiopia, 7 52.1% in South West Nigeria, 9 and 73.4% in Western Ethiopia. 10 Self-medication among HCWs is associated with unethical practices, the risk of misuse of addicting drugs, such as opiates and benzodiazepines, and untoward effects on the patient and quality of care delivered.…”

Prevalence, sources and purpose of self-prescribed non-opioid analgesic among health professionals in Sokoto metropolis, Nigeria: a cause for concern

“…The irrational use of drugs, such as self-prescribing, needs to be strongly discouraged among the Nigerian public. This practice has been found to be popular among health professionals [16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. The health professionals are supposed to be more rational in their use of drugs; however, many of them are not [16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

“…The study tool adopted was a well-structured anonymous questionnaire developed from literature review [16][17][18][19][20]22,24].…”

“…There is also a popular directive suggesting that health professionals, particularly the doctors, should not treat themselves [17][18][19]. However, self-prescription of NOAs was also found to be highly prevalent among them [16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

Prevalence and factors associated with the consumption of psychoactive substances by health care workers

“…In addition to precarious conditions and quality of life at work (material resources and human subjectivity), many professionals also have comorbid health conditions (7) . This encourages the manifestation and development of certain occupational diseases, often combined with the technicalscientific knowledge of those who handle such substances, which contributes to self-medication in order to relieve certain symptoms (10) .…”