Abstract
Background: Self-medication is a common practice among health sciences students in Saudi Arabia. It is known that inappropriate selfmedication may harm individuals due to increasing the risk of drug misuse or delaying a hospital visit by masking some symptoms. Thus, the aim of our study is to investigate and assess practices, awareness and attitudes toward analgesics self-medication among health science students in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Methods: This is a cross-sectional study in a form of electronic survey that was conducted among health sciences students from different universities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 2016. Two hundred and seventy- two students responded to the questionnaire. The electronic questionnaire survey covered demographics, self-medication practice and the analgesics consumption, attitude and awareness about the safety of self- medication practice of analgesics.
Results: Factors associated with high prevalence of self-medication w ere not significant except for age (P = 0.04). Health sciences students had adequate knowledge about the safety of analgesics consumption itself and simultaneous use of analgesics with other drugs, significantly different by college; 80% for Pharmacy, 71% for Medicine, 61% for Nursing and Dentistry, and 25% for Applied Medical Sciences and pre-professional students (p = 0.037).
Conclusion: The occurrence of self-medication practices is distressingly high among health sciences students. It is necessary to educate the students about the side effects and drawbacks of irresponsible self-medication. (C) 2018 The Authors. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University.