Assessment of Self-Medication Practices and Its Associated Factors among Undergraduates of a Private University in Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Self-medication is the use of drugs to treat self-diagnosed disorders or symptoms or the intermittent or continued use of prescribed drug for chronic or recurrent disease or symptoms, and it is mostly common in developing countries. This study therefore assessed the practice of self-medication among undergraduate students of a private university in Nigeria.

Methods: The study employed a descriptive cross-sectional design. A pretested questionnaire was self-administered to 384 undergraduate students of the university. Data were analysed and summarised using descriptive and inferential statistics such as chi-squared and Fisher's exact tests.

Results: Overall, 297 (81.8%) undergraduate students practiced self-medication. About 71% of the students had used analgesic, antibiotics (10.5%), and antimalarial drugs (33%) without prescription within one month prior to the survey. The most commonly used drug for self-medication was paracetamol (75.1%). Furthermore, self-medication was found to be significantly associated with age (p=0.021), gender (p < 0.001), college (p=0.025), and year of study (p=0.004). Some of the reasons why undergraduate students practiced self-medication were because of the unfriendly attitude of health care workers (27.7%), lack of time to go to school clinic (26.7%), school clinic is too far from hostel (15.3%), and drugs prescribed in the school clinic do not improve health condition (15.3%).

Conclusion: Majority of the students attributed the practice of self-medication to unfriendly attitude of health care workers in the university clinic.

Figure 1

Commonly used analgesics for self-medication (n=258).

Figure 2

Antibiotic use for self-medication among respondents (n=38).

Figure 3

Commonly used antimalarial drugs for self-medication (n=120).

Figure 4

Reasons for practicing self-medication (n=297).