Publication:

Prevalence and pattern of self-medication among urban population Chidambaram: a cross-sectional study

Background Self-medication as the selection and use of medicines by the individuals to treat self-recognised illness or symptoms. Self-medication is recognised as a part of self-care. The objectives of this study was to find out the prevalence of self-medication in an urban Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu, to find out the pattern of self-medication with regard to its practice and to find out the reasons favoring the practice of self-medication.

Methods The cross-sectional study was carried out in the month of September 2018 in a randomly selected urban field practice area of a tertiary care hospital. The sample size was calculated to be 360. Data was collected from all the houses in the selected field practice area. The data collected was entered into Microsoft excel spread sheet 2018 and analysis was done using SPSS version 21.

Results Self-medication was practiced by 195 (48.75%) of the households and 215 (18.6%) of the study participants. 42.1% reported pharmacist as source of knowledge. Most common symptom/sign for which self-medication was practiced was fever (42%). Most commonly (57.9%) used self-medicament was non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents. Antibiotics were used by 15.4% as self- medicament. Among the 195 households practising self-medication, 65 (33.3%) reported that accessibility to pharmacy was more than that of clinic as reason for practicing self-medication.

Conclusions The usage of antibiotics as self-medicament and decreased awareness regarding the side effects of self-medicaments indicated decreased practice of responsible self-medication in the study area. More studies have to be conducted regarding the awareness, barriers and facilitators for practicing responsible self-medication.