Abstract:
Background: self-medication is when an individual consumes medicines based on their self-diagnosis
of a disease, without consulting a medical practitioner or taking any clinical assays to justify their
assumptions self-medication. Self-medication does not only refer to consuming medicines based on
acute symptoms, rather, it also involves repetitive self-administration of medicines for chronic
diseases.
Objective: To identify the prevalence of the practice of self-medication among the students of Bab
Al-Zubair colleges in Basra
Methods: The study was conducted in Bab Al-Zubair Colleges, and 400 students from five colleges
participated in filling out the questionnaire (100 nursing students, 100 law students, 100 Al- Zahra
medical students, 50 Administration and economics students, 50 arts students). This study was a crosssectional study using a self-administered questionnaire.
Results: Females were more likely to use self-medication (51%), while males were (49%), and they
were mostly young (range 19 – 25 years. 53.25% of the sample lived in the center of the governorate,
while 46.75% lived in the parties. With regard to the economic situation, 38.75% had good while
52.5% middle and 8.75% little the results of our research showed that the most common medications
used by university students for therapeutic purposes were headache medications (81.75%) and
analgesics (78%), the main sources of information were pharmacists (47.75%) and (previous
medication use) with (27%) Most of the drugs were obtained from a private pharmacy without a
prescription. |
