Knowledge, attitude and practice of self medication in Southwest Ethiopia

Background: Self-medication is the selection and use of medicines by individuals to treat selfrecognised illnesses or symptoms and an important initial response to illnesses if successfully used. The objective of this study was to assess knowledge, attitude and practice of self medication among Medical Sciences Faculty students of Jimma University.

Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in Medical sciences Faculty students in 2009.The faculty and the three schools were selected by lottery method .Then, within the faculty respective number of students for each School was determined by proportion from the total sample size. Data was collected randomly from each School using self administered questionnaires and analyzed using SPSS version 16.0

Results: From a total of 403 (100%) participants,95 (45.89%) students practiced self medication in the past two months for commonly perceived illnesses such as headache 35 (36.85%), abdominal pain 29 (30.55%) and cough 33 (23.16%) using mainly analgesics 40(49.38%) and antibiotics 29 (35.80%) mostly from drug retail outlets 88(92.63). Fifty seven (60.00%) respondents can recall the dose, frequency and duration of the medicine while 38 (40%) did not know. Sixty five (68.42%) students agreed to practice self medication irrespective of the seriousness of illnesses.

Conclusion: Self mediation was widely practiced for minor symptoms with both OTC and prescription only drugs. Most of respondents use self medication irrespective of the seriousness of the illnesses. Lack of proper information and the ease of access from drug outlets were the most important problems.