Analgesics self-medication among undergraduate students of a Rural Medical College

Analgesics self-medication among undergraduate students of a Rural Medical College Sir, According to the WHO, self-medication is a part of self-care. [1] However, it may cause more harm than good due to any irresponsible use, especially by the young medical students who have easy access to all sort of drugs. Pain is one of the most common sufferings of humankind which compels for analgesic self-medication with nonprescription drugs and students are no exception to this behavior. Due to paucity of literature regarding self-medication among medical students, this study was designed to know the prevalence and pattern of analgesic self-medication among the undergraduate students of a rural medical college in Bihar, India. An observational cross-sectional study was conducted among students of all phases of MBBS. A predesigned semi-structured, validated, anonymous, and confidential questionnaire with voluntary participation was used to collect the relevant information after ethical clearance. Cronbach's alpha test was applied to test the reliability of the questionnaire and it was found to be 0.75. Questionnaire consists of close-ended questions related to personal and sociodemographic data, symptoms that led to analgesic use, type of most used analgesics, most important source of information, and frequency of analgesics use in last 1 month. The data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics. Odds ratio and Chi-square test were applied. The sum of percentages is not always 100% as some questions contained multiple responses. A total of 308 completely filled questionnaires were evaluated out of 320 participants, giving a response rate of 96.25%. The mean age was 21.4 ± 1.85 years with a male to female ratio of 1.33:1. The prevalence of analgesic self-medication was 49.7% (n = 153). Similar studies done on medical students in India showed prevalence of analgesic use ranging from 23%–90%.