Abstract

Self-medication is defined as obtaining and consuming drugs without the advice of a physician either for diagnosis, prescription or surveillance of treatment. Self-medication can lead to wasteful expenditure, increase in morbidities due to adverse events and resistance to antibiotics. So enhancing the knowledge and attitude of consumers is very important to reduce practice of self-medication. The objective of the study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of self-medication among health science students at Debre Markos University in 2016. An institutional based cross-sectional study design was conducted. A total of 276 eligible participants were selected using simple random sampling after participants were proportionally allocated to size from each department in health Science College. Data was collected using pretested structured self-administered questionnaire. When queried, 64.6% of the respondents had good level of knowledge on self-medication, while 49.1% had favorable attitudes towards self-medication practice. Moreover, 58.4% of participants practiced self-medication. This study shows that self-medication is widely practiced among health sciences students in Debre Markos University(DMU), more than half of the respondents were found to have good knowledge about self-medication however, their outlook towards it remain majorly unfavorable. Therefore, concerned bodies need to enhance the level of knowledge and attitude towards the impacts of self-medication.

Key words:  Knowledge, attitude, practice, self-medication, Ethiopia.