ASSESSMENT OF ADMINISTRATION PATTERN AND RELATIVE RISK OF SELF-MEDICATION WITH ANTIBIOTICS AMONG COLLEGE STUDENTS
Sheetal Singh Tomer*, Arun Kumar and Aditya Parashar
ABSTRACT
Self-medication is human behaviour in which an individual uses medicine for self-administration to treat the common diseases. Antibiotics (Penicillin, Cephalosporin, Tetracyclines and Aminoglycosides) are commonly used as self-medicated drugs that treat infections by killing or inhibiting the growth of bacteria. A prospective study was performed with 105 college students to find out the administration pattern and related risks associated in self-medication with antibiotics, including demographic characteristics of the population, general questions, pattern-based questions and relative risk assessment done by using statistical method. The relative risk is the ratio of the probability of an outcome in an exposed group to the probability of an outcome in an unexposed group. The result shows the relative risk more than 1, indicating that self-medication falls under harmful aspects of human behaviour. The major study population are female- 69 (65.71%) students, belong to rural areas which is higher 74 (70.74% of the test population) than urban population showing that the rural population is not much aware of the negative impacts of self-medication. 80 (76.19%) students have accepted that they easily get an antibiotic medicine, out of which 21 (20%) students have experienced an adverse effect from the ongoing treatment. 38 (36.19%) students used antibiotics for wound healing purpose. 51 (48.57%) students have purchased the antibiotics by using previously written prescriptions, 27 (25.71%) followed the instructions from community pharmacist also. It is necessary to understand that self-medication is not safe at all. One should avoid such attitude in order to maintain one’s health status.
Keywords: Antibiotic medicines, Self-medication, Risk assessment, Administration pattern, Health hazards, Treatment adherence, Drug resistance.
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