Abstract
Background: Antibiotic misuse refers to the misuse or overuse of antibiotics, with potentially serious effects on health which result in antibiotic resistance.
Objectives: to determine the prevalence and factors associated with self-medication practice among the different sectors of the general population of Saudi Arabia.
Methods: A cross-sectional community based study in different areas of the Kingdome of Saudi Arabia, during the period from 1 March to 31 June, 2018. Five community pharmacies were selected from each area of Saudi Arabia using simple random sampling technique in order to represent the 5 geographical areas of the kingdom (North, East, South, West and Centre). A predesigned self administered questionnaire distributed to consumers buying medications with or without prescriptions. The questionnaire included the relevant questions about the needed data. The statistical analysis was carried out using SPSS software for Windows (version 16.0). Chi-Square test was used as a test of significans. A 5% level was chosen as a level of statistical significance.
Results: The results indicated that 5.6% of the participants always and 25.0% sometimes, purchased the drugs without prescriptions. Most of them 62.0% purchased non prescribed drugs 1-3 times within the previous 6 months. The source of information about the medications was the pharmacist in 22.9% and the physician in 28.6%. The most common reasons for self-medications was Influenza and common cold 18.1% followed by dental problems 10.5% and the most common medications purchased without prescriptions were analgesics/antipyretics 23.1%, antibiotics 17.4% and antispasmodics 6.8%. Improvement on self medication was reported by 83.3%, occurrence of problems in only 5.8% but only 24.1% recommend self medication to others.
Conclusion: self-medication is still considered a common public health problem in Saudi Arabia as the results of the current study indicated that 5.6% of the participants always and 25.0% sometimes, purchased the drugs without prescriptions. So we recommend conducting large scale researches focusing on the causes and methods of prevention of this problem. We also recommend health education of the public to increase the consumers' awareness about the hazards of self-medication specially with antibiotics.