Knowledge, attitude, and practice of self-medication among pharmacy students

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the knowledge, attitude, and practice of self-medication among pharmacy students at a private university in Iloilo City. Furthermore, it intended to determine whether there is a significant relationship between the respondent’s knowledge and practice of self-medication and whether there is a significant relationship between the respondent’s attitude and the practice of self-medication. The total sample size of this study was 96 out of 102 students who were selected from all level 3 pharmacy students obtained through census sampling. The respondents answered a 30-item online questionnaire modified and adapted from Arifulla, M., et al. (2014) article with 10-item multiple choice questions to measure the knowledge of self-medication used, and from Solomon et.al (2022) article each consist of 10-item questionnaire answerable by 3-point likert scale to measure the attitude and practice of self-medication. The study’s findings indicate that the majority of the pharmacy students have a high level of knowledge towards self medication used with a mean score of 9 out of 10. The study also revealed that the pharmacy students have a favorable attitude towards self-medication with 46.9% of the total population while 65.6% of the population has an average to high level of self-medication practices. Thus, the study shows that there is no significant relationship between the respondent’s knowledge and practice of self-medication. The positive attitude towards self-medication is strongly associated with a higher likelihood of engaging in self-medication practices among pharmacy students.