Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Students in Universities of Isfahan toward Self Medication

Self medication is one of the commonest actions in the world. The purpose of this study was to determine the knowledge, attitude and practice of students in universities of Isfahan toward self medication. In this descriptive, analytical, cross-sectional study, 600 students of universities in Isfahan were selected. Since there are 3 public universities in Isfahan, multilevel sampling was performed based on the total number of students in each university. The data was collected by a researcher-developed questionnaire. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire have been confirmed by content validity, face validity and internal reliability (α = 0.7). The collected data was analyzed by SPSS15. The significance level was considered as P < 0.05. The average scores of knowledge (83.93 ± 17.9) and practice (97.58 ± 6.49) of students were high. However, their attitude toward self medication was moderate. About 14.2% of the students had experienced self medication at least once in the past two months. The participants used self medication mainly for cold. In addition, pain killers were the most frequent medicine. The commonest causes of self medication were previous experience of the disease and availability of medicines. The most important preventive reason of self medication was lack of belief in self medication. Based on our findings, the attitude of students was moderate. Therefore, considering the important role of students in the society, the necessity of providing instructions to students for changing their attitude is apparent.