Consumers’ awareness, attitude and associated factors towards self-medication in Hail, Saudi Arabia

To determine the factors motivating the consumers towards self-medication, the intended indications and the consumers' perceptions about complications that may arise due to its use. Cross-sectional community based prospective study. Community pharmacies located at various locations of Hail, Sau...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one Vol. 15; no. 4; p. e0232322
Main Authors: Ansari, Mukhtar, Alanazi, Abdulrahman, Moin, Afrasim
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States Public Library of Science 28.04.2020
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects:
Age
Antibiotics
Arabic language
Biology and Life Sciences
College graduates
Complications
Consumer behavior
Consumer preferences
Consumer research
Consumers
Cough
Data collection
Diseases
Drug self-administration
Drugs
Drugstores
Education
Fever
Gender
Graduates
Hail
Headache
Health care
Health facilities
Income
Medical personnel
Medicine and Health Sciences
People and places
Pharmacy
Pharyngitis
Pharynx
Physical Sciences
Questionnaires
Regression analysis
Research and Analysis Methods
Self care (Health)
Self-medication
Sore throat
Studies
Time
Saudi Arabia
ISSN:1932-6203, 1932-6203
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:To determine the factors motivating the consumers towards self-medication, the intended indications and the consumers' perceptions about complications that may arise due to its use. Cross-sectional community based prospective study. Community pharmacies located at various locations of Hail, Saudi Arabia from January 2019 to March 2019. The subjects of this cross-sectional study were people visiting community pharmacies for self-medication. Data on 663 participants was collected through a validated questionnaire prepared on the basis of WHO guidelines for the regulatory assessment of medicinal products for use in self-medication. Two trained data collectors visited the randomly selected community pharmacies, approached and interviewed the consumers purchasing medicines without prescriptions. Data was entered in SPSS and analyzed using descriptive and inferential analyses (alpha level = 0.05). Out of 663 respondents, 68.6% were university graduates; and 33.9% were healthcare professionals. Consumers preferred self-medication mainly for headache (85.8%), cold and sore throat (80.8%), cough (75.7%) and fever (71.8%) with the justification that these illnesses were minor (90.2%), time saving (82.2%), convenient (74.7%), quicker relief (66.1%), and economical (61.2%). Occupation was significantly associated with the reasons for preferring self-medication (p<0.001). Similarly, age, gender and education were also significantly associated with most of the reasons for opting self-medication. People were quite aware about harmful consequences of self-medication. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that the respondents with lower education (AOR = 2.404 [95% CI: 1.579-3.661]), non-healthcare professionals (AOR = 1.712 [95% CI: 1.143-2.565]) and higher monthly income (AOR = 0.376 [95% CI: 0.236-0.599]) preferred self-medication (p <0.001, p = 0.009, p <0.001) respectively. Self-medication was prevalent among young university graduate males for minor ailments mainly due to convenience and time saving. Despite people beliefs about the harmful consequences of self-medication, its use was omnipresent particularly among the respondents with lower education, non-healthcare professionals and people with higher monthly income.
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Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0232322