Introduction: Self-medication is the use of medications on one's own initiative to alleviate or cure some ailment, this practice may have positive points in favor of the economy and demand of health centers worldwide, however, the negative consequences are more relevant, such as future antibiotic resistance, misdiagnosis or treatment and combinations of drugs that can cause adverse reactions. Objective: To identify the factors that cause self-medication in nursing students of the Technical University of Ambato. Methods: A quantitative research with a non-experimental, cross-sectional design was carried out. A total of 183 nursing students from the fifth, sixth and seventh semesters of the Technical University of Ambato participated in the study. A 23-item questionnaire with a validity of 97.2% and reliability of 86.3% was applied. Results: 97.3% prevalence of low frequency self-medication (80.9%) was reported, where the main reason for self-medication was the consideration of mild symptoms with 82% and the most commonly used drugs were analgesics with 94.5%. Conclusions: There is a high prevalence of self-medication in nursing students, which leads to take informative measures to avoid or decrease this percentage in students and population in the future.