World Journal of
Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences

COMPARATIVE STUDY ON KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE OF SELF MEDICATION AMONG THE MEDICAL AND NON-MEDICAL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN DHAKA CITY

Morshed Nasir*, Tahmina Zahan, Rowshan Ara Parvin, Nadia Farha and Farhana Zaman

ABSTRACT

Self-medication is widespread in Bangladesh and clinically inappropriate and inefficient use of medicines is a serious problem as a whole. Self-medication involves the use of medicine by the people who want to treat self-recognized symptoms by themselves. A cross sectional survey was conducted by 400 pre-tested and validated questionnaires distributed among the undergraduate students of similar age group and corresponding education level in Dhaka city. The survey was done simultaneously on 3rd year and 4th year medical students of Holy Family Red Crescent Medical College and Faculty of Business Administration in Green University, Dhaka during February to May 2016. To compare the knowledge, attitude and practice of self medication among the undergraduate students, medical and non-medical education had some impact in the responses. Undergraduate medical students were found to practice more self medication (78.1%) than the non-medical students (55.1%). Anti-pyretic or analgesics are the most common self-medication by medical students, whereas multivitamins are by non-medical students. The reasons behind the self medication was ‘minor illness’ (40%) and ‘confidence on self knowledge’ (33%) among the medical students; whereas the main reason among non-medical students was ‘need immediate relief’ (24%). Present study finds significant difference regarding self-medication antimicrobials and also with antiulcer drugs, cough-syrups, antipyretics, vitamins with minerals among the medical students of Bangladesh and West-Bengal. It may be due to lack of implementation of proper regulatory control on OTC sale of antimicrobials in Bangladesh.

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