La automedicación en estudiantes del Grado en Farmacia

Self-medication is the administration of medications to relieve a symptom or cure a disease without medical supervision. This behaviour is very widespread worldwide, even within the university in which the future professionals who will play a major role in the community health services are trained. Although there are studies concerning self-medication behaviours in the university population in other countries, there is little data regarding this behaviour in our field. The purpose of this study is to estimate the level of self-medication in a university group of students, as well as the factors associated with this behaviour. The habit of self-medication is very frequent in our study population, with a mean of 72.5%. This figure increases from year to year, from 53% in the first year to 93% in the last. Almost all students admit self-medication with analgesics, and it is worth noting the self-medication with antibiotics (13.6%) used for poorly defined clinical situations. Even more worrying is self-medication with prescription drugs, such as anxiolytics and tranquillisers, used by 5% of students. We conclude that the high percentage of self-medication of the general population is practically matched in this population of pharmacy students. The most commonly used drugs are analgesics, antihistamines and anti-influenza, and there are also low but notable percentages of self-medication with antibiotics and anxiolytics, which is more worrying.