Medicine Knowledge and Self-Medication Practice Among Students

Abstract

This research was carried out to assess medicine knowledge and self-medication practice among undergraduate students of University of Jos, Jos, Nigeria; and to determine if a relationship exists between both. A descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted,using a pretested questionnaire on 639 undergraduate studentsof University of Jos, sampled through a stratified two-stage cluster design. Data collected were entered and analysed using SPSS 16 and the chi-square test was used to determine associations between variables. The knowledge assessment test revealed that 36.9 % of respondents had inadequate knowledge, 30.8 % had marginal knowledge and 32.3 % had adequate knowledge. There was no significant relationship between self-medication and medicine knowledge. However, a significant (P < 0.05) relationship exists between medicine knowledge and respondents’ faculty. Major sources of medicine information were health professionals (46.2 %), friends/relatives (17.1 %) and medicine information leaflets (16.9 %). The prevalence of self-medication was 51.5 % (95 % confidence interval of 47.6 – 55.4). The common reasons given by respondents for engaging in self-medication were that they were knowledgeable about the disease/treatment, their illness was mild, and that they had taken the same type of medicine in the past. The common classes of medicines used for self-medication were analgesics (26.0 %), antimalarial (19.8 %) and vitamins/hematinic preparations (15.7 %). The major sources of medicines for self-medication were the Patent Medicine Stores (53.4 %) and the Community Pharmacies (40.5 %). The study revealed that no significant relationship exist between self-medication practice and medicine knowledge among respondent. However, self-medication practice was high and inadequate knowledge of medicines exists among respondents.