Comparative Study on Self-Medication among Medical and Non-Medical University Undergraduates

Abstract

People usually pursue self-medication to deal with common ailments. Reuse of previous prescriptions, utilization of available unused medicines at home (from another prescription), and recommendation of any medicine by family and friends are some of the key factors that trigger self-medication. To evaluate the practice of self-medication, the selected population was university undergraduates, as the youth have a great impact on social media, which may help them to teach self-medication in two ways, i.e., increase or decrease of self-medication. This study was aimed at comparing the self-medication practices among medical and non-medical university undergraduates (students). This was a cross-sectional study conducted among the medical and non-medical university undergraduates in Karachi, Pakistan. A validated questionnaire was filled by 452 participants and analyzed using SPSS version 25. It was found that 59.5% of medical students always prefer self-medication, whereas 40.5% of non-medical students were seen to self-medicate when falling ill. Among all medical students, 49.4%, compared to 50.6% among non-medical students, were found to have self-medicated. From this study, we found that the medical student graduates showed the highest prevalence of self-medication compared to students in a non-medical field. Awareness campaigns about the consumption of medicine without prescription should be arranged by healthcare professionals and the government for the youth. The selling of drugs without prescription or medical advice should also be restricted by Pakistani healthcare authorities via organizing essential curative and preventive seminars.