perception‎ and interpretation of women’s self-medication in Ilam city

The purpose of this study is to achieve women's perception and interpretation of the phenomenon of self-medication. This research has been done by interpretive phenomenological method. its statistical population is the habitant women in Ilam in 2020, 26 of whom have been selected as a research sample using purposive sampling with the criterion of‎ theoretical saturation. The data collection tool is a semi-structured interview and the data analysis method is the method of Smith et al. (2009). Credibility and reliability criteria were used for Validation and reliability was achieved by experts through an audit method. The "Denzin theoretical triangulation" technique was used to categorize, analyze and interpret the data. The findings indicate that the women in the study express their financial sufferings, perception of simple treatment, injustice in treatment centers and the existence of socio-cultural contexts of self-medication to justify for their behavior. As a result, the women studied, due to their ignorance of the consequences of self-medication, choose the easiest, fastest and most economical way to get rid of pain. In general, self-medication is the product of the combined result of biased encounter to medical staff on the one hand and the experience of unprofessional encounter of physicians on the other hand in a cultural context.