Self-Medication Knowledge among Science-Program Students Participating in Phramongkutklao College of Medicine Open-House Project
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Abstract
Introduction: Self-medication is an administration of medicine to themselves in order to prevent or treat a certain condition by their own account. Nowadays, the act of self-medication can be found widespread in Thailand. Although, the worldwide studies found that there are very few adolescents who have proper self-medication knowledge, there is no study of self-medication knowledge in Thai youth. Objectives: This study aimed to determine the self-medication knowledge of the science-program students who participating in Phramongkutklao College of Medicine (PCM) open-house project. Methods: This cross-sectional study focused on one thousand science-program students which were selected by simple random sampling. The data was collected by self-administered questionnaires that consisted of 10-true/false questions to explore self-medication knowledge. A descriptive statistic, t-test and two-way ANOVA were used for data analysis at significance level (α) = 0.05. Results: A total of 613 subjects completed the questionnaires that shown response rate about 61.30%. The average score of self-medication knowledge was 5.77 ± 1.56 out of 10. Based on current study, the question that students gave the fewest correct answers was “Anti-inflammatory drugs can destroy or reduce bacterial growth” (19.31%). Also, this study found that gender and education level were not interacted with total scores and the main effects shown that female students had higher score than male students with the statistical significance (M = 5.81 ± 1.55, 5.62 ± 1.61; p<0.05). Furthermore, students who have domicile in Bangkok had higher score than students in other part of the country (M = 6.95 ± 0.73, 5.77 ± 0.32; p<0.05). Conclusions: This study revealed that self-medication knowledge among science-program students were in the moderate level. The science-program in high school should consider about how to develop courses or activities and hence promote valid self-medication practices to improve the knowledge for students.
Keywords: Self-medication knowledge, Science-program students
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References
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