Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Self-Medication with Antibiotics Among Nursing Students

İngilizce (OpenAlex)

Background and Objective: Self-medication practice is a cause of growing concern among nursing students.Access to drugs and handling them in their future practices make nursing students susceptible to self-medication.This study was carried out to determine knowledge, attitude and practice towards self medication with antibiotic among nursing students.Materials and Methods: It was completed with 570 students as a descriptive study.Data were collected between February and March, 2016.The questionnaire was included socio-demographic characteristics, antibiotics knowledge, attitudes and practice associated with antibiotics usage.Descriptive and chi-square tests were used for data analysis.Results: It was identified that 31.1% of the students started using antibiotics by their own.The following reasons for starting to use antibiotics: Common cold and flu, sore throat, toothache/swelling, fever, cough, abdominal pain, weakness, urinary burning and skin infection.The decision to start using antibiotics was influenced by being satisfied from previous antibiotics use, test fees, drug store and surrounding advice.Despite the sample groupʼs younger mean age, the rate of starting to use antibiotics on their own was high.It was identified that 66.5% have previously heard of antibiotic resistance; only 29.8% could correctly define antibiotic resistance.Conclusion: It was determined that approximately one third of them had started using antibiotics on their own and the majority of them did not understand antibiotic resistance correctly.