Self-rated health and self-medication: knowledge, attitudes, and practices among university students

Self-rated health has widely been used as an indicator of health status in social health policy research. Self-medication (including the use of antibiotics) is a major global problem for health care systems. Our study evaluated self-rated health and self-medication knowledge, attitudes, and practices of students of health sciences.

The study was carried out on health students, namely medicine, pharmacy, and nursing students. The study employed a combination of sample size calculations, probability proportional to size sampling, and stratified random sampling to ensure an adequate and representative sample for the investigation. A questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was performed. A knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) survey was used to measure the extent of self-rated health and self-medication among students. Also, the impact of the demographic characteristics of students on self-rated health and self-medication has been analyzed.

Students have rated their health 30% moderate to bad, 50% reported that they take medicines, and 26% took antibiotics without prescription. Students in our study (42%) believe that self-medication is a good or accepted practice. The reasons for self-medication were ease and lack of time, cost of the medical visit, and trust in the person who would prescribe them.

An approach for both public health issues may include awareness and education about the consequences of self-medication; strategies to prevent the supply of medicines without a prescription; strict rules on the advertising of pharmaceutical products and health care strategies for all by eliminating health inequalities.