Self-Medication and Its Relevant Factors in Students of Yazd Medical Sciences

Abstract

Background: Self-medication is one of the main socioeconomic and health problems in different societies and irrational drug consumption can sometimes lead to unfavorable outcomes and even death. The present study has been performed to investigate self-medication and its relevant factors in students of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences in Yazd.
 Methods: This analytical study investigate 300 students of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences Using Cochran's formula in Yazd (2020). The samples were selected by stratified sampling proportional to the strata size and the data were collected by a researcher-made questionnaire from Gholipoor etal's article (2012) and analyzed by descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentage, mean ± SD and multiple response analysis (MRA), chi-square and binary logistic regression. All statistical analyses were done by SPSS 20 (α=0.05).
 Results: The total self-medication rate was estimated 39%. The most common causes of self-medication among the students were the experience of the disease (50.4%) and considering the disease non-risky (47.0%).The most common self-medication case was cold (53.0%) and the most common way of supplying the drug for self-medication was purchasing from drugstores (52.1%).The results of multiple logistic regression showed that the only variable having a significant effect on the probability of self-medication was income (p = 0.02); odds of self-medication in students with an average income of 20-30 million Rials was about twice as high as students with an income of more than 30 million Rials (p = 0.02, OR = 1.8).
 Conclusion: Self-medication is not a safe habit and it can cause complications such as drug interaction, addiction, drug poisoning, concealment of the disease and in general, health risks. Meanwhile, the students’ attitude towards self-medication can affect the behavior of their future patients. So, it is suggested to inform students in this area.