Background: Self medication is becoming very popular among medical students as they get exposed to knowledge about diseases and drugs, but which is very superficial in second year undergraduates, so the present study was conducted to evaluate the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of self medication among second year undergraduate students.Methods: A questionnaire based study containing 12 questions was conducted in 175 second year undergraduate students after taking informed consent. Statistical analysis was done by using descriptive statistics by Graph Pad Prism version 6.01.Results: Out of the 175 students, 155 (88.57%) students have taken self medication. The common reason for taking it was no need to visit the doctor for minor illness (64%), quick relief (48.57%) and time saving (34.29%). The common indications for taking self medication were fever (69.14%) and cough and cold (69.14%) followed by headache (64%). Although students rarely practised it due to risk associated like adverse effects 131 (74.86%) and lack of proper knowledge about drugs 118 (67.3%).Conclusions: Self medication is highly prevalent among students, as most of the students get it from pharmacies, it is necessary to make strict guidelines for availability of such medicines over the counter and also there is need to educate the students about harmful consequences of self medication to make them responsible future doctors.
Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are the major cause of drug related morbidity and mortality. Pharmacovigilance is the science that plays an important role in the reduction of ADRs. Voluntary reporting of ADRs by healthcare professionals is an important tool in the success of pharmacovigilance program, but the same are scantly reported due to lack of awareness and knowledge among the physicians. So, the present study was conducted to evaluate the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) regarding ADR reporting among healthcare professionals at a tertiary care hospital.Methods: A questionnaire-based study containing 25 questions (knowledge- 18, attitude -2 and practice- 5) was conducted in 70 prescribers and time allotted to complete it was 1 week. Statistical analysis was done by using Graph Pad Prism version 6.01.Results: Out of 70 prescribers, only 50 (71.43%) responded. ADR reporting was considered very important by almost all of them, but actual practice was lacking as only 36% of consultants had reported any ADR. The higher grading was given to causes most important for reporting were patient safety, to identify safe drug and new ADRs. The main reasons for under-reporting were unavailability of reporting forms when needed, uncertain association and lack of knowledge about reporting procedure.Conclusions: The prescribers are aware of the importance of ADR reporting, but lack of awareness and knowledge are most common cause of under-reporting. So, there is need of pharmacovigilance awareness program to improve voluntary reporting of ADRs.
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