EVALUATION OF THE SELF-MEDICATION PATTERNS AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF KARACHI

Abstract

A cross-sectional study was conducted at the Jinnah Medical and Dental College, Karachi to find out the patterns of self-medication amongst the medical and non-medical university students of Karachi. A self-administered 21 item questionnaire was used to collect the data from four medical and four non-medical universities. A total of 200 students participated in the study. Results of this showed that 96.9% of medical university student and 92.2% of non-medical university students reported that they self-medicate. The most frequent reason of self-medication among medical students was headache (37.5%) followed by fever (19.8%); whereas in non-medical students it was fever (38.2%) followed by headache (34.3%). A vast majority of both the medical (86.5%) and non-medical (74.5%) students did agree to the fact that self-medication is harmful. Approximately Ninety one percent of the medical and 71.6% of the non-medical students believed that they should be careful with the intake of non-prescribed drugs. The study reveals that self-medication among university students of Karachi is very common. And it is higher in medical students since they believe they have enough knowledge to treat themselves without consulting a doctor, despite of the fact that most of them know that it is not correct.