2. Knowledge of Physical Health Consequences and Practice of Self-Medication Among Students of Tertiary Institutions in North-Central, Nigeria

Abstract

The increase in the practice of self-medication based on the various health problems arising from the side-effects and drug resistance as reported by various scholars appears to be global in nature. Although, everyone is at some risk of self-medicated drug-related problems, students in tertiary institutions seem to be particularly vulnerable. This study focused not only on the risk taking behaviour involved in self-medicated drugs practiced  but also investigated the knowledge of physical health effects as related to the practice of self-medication. The study adopted the survey research design. The sample consisted of 900 respondents who where sampled using multi-stage sampling procedure. A set of questionnaire developed and validated by the researchers was used to collect data for the study. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics of t-test were used answer the research questions and the hypotheses respectively. All the hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed that a high percentage of respondents practiced self-medication. Also, the study showed a significance difference between male and female in the knowledge of self-medication with the p-value of 0.004 less than 0.05 alpha level of significance. While there were no significant difference on knowledge of physical health effects of self-medication. The study showed that the higher the knowledge of physical health consequences, the lower the practice of self-medication by the respondents. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended that self-medication related course should be integrated into the General Studies courses in tertiary institutions in Nigeria.