Self-Medication Practices among a Sample of University Students Attending College of Science in Diyala Province

Abstract

Background: Self-medication is the use of drugs and painkillers by many people with therapeutic or preventive intent without prior professional advice or prescribed by a physician, including adults to treat their selfrecognized diseases and symptoms.Objectives: Determine the rate of self-medication practice among university students and determine the most common area to be selfmedicated and the most common drug group for self-medication.Subjects and Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study of a random sample of students attending two branches of college of science (biology and chemistry) from the period of 10th December 2018 to 15 th April 2019 through purposive sampling technique to collect responses from students using structured questionnaire which was divided into many sections including demographic details of research participants, history of taking medication to treat a health problem without a prescription at the last month, the reasons of self-medication practice. Sample size was 220 university students. All data were entered on Microsoft Excel 2010, and managed and analyzed on SPSS version 19. The means and standard deviations were calculated and both t-test and chi-square tests were used to identify the associations between variables. The confidence level was set at 95%, and the p value of less than 0.05 was the limit value of significance. Result:The rate of practicing self-medication was significantly higher among studied university students and it accounted for (64.1%). And it was significantly higher in females (62.4%) than males (37.6%). Most of the self-medications (59.6%) were practiced for the pains originating from head and neck. The vast majority of students (80.9%) significantly were using analgesics and antipyretic, and most of them (71.6%) were practicing it at any time during the year. Conclusion:The study concluded that the rate of self-medication among university students was at the high level, the self-medication was practiced anytime during the year and the use of analgesics was significantly dominant among other drug groups.