Perception and Practice of Self Medication Among Students Nurses of Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals' Complex, School of Nursing, Ile Ife

Self-Medication (SM) is the treatment of common health problems with medicines especially designed and labelled for use without medical supervision. It is a tool to treat minor illnesses but improper because there are grave consequences. This study is set to determine the perception and practice of SM among the study population. This descriptive cross sectional study of 125 student nurses was carried out for three months. A self-administered questionnaire with twenty-four items was used to generate data from the participants. The result of the study provides information on perception and practice of self-medication among the study population as 67(53.6%) have good knowledge of SM while 61.6% have previous experience of treating ailment through SM. It was also seen as cost-effective by (41.6%). The study revealed that (52.8%) practice SM because the ailment was a minor one. However, (40%) said it’s not safe, and (38.4%) said SM is not always effective. The findings also showed that most students have studied Pharmacology with good knowledge of the efficacy of drugs thus prone to the practice of SM because they feel they are out to gain. It was recommended among others that the school management should make effort to caution students from self-medication and try as much as possible to make a doctor available for easy accessibility of healthcare treatment by the students.

Keywords: Self-medication, Perception, Practice, Student nurses,