Self-medication practices with antibiotics among nursing students: A cross-sectional descriptive survey at tertiary care teaching hospital in Uttarakhand

Background: Misuse and overuse of antimicrobials is one of the world's most pressing public health problems. Nurses are important members of healthcare team and thus it is essential to know behaviour of antibiotics use among budding nurses. Aim & objective: To assess prevalence and practices of self-medication with antibiotic among undergraduate nursing students. Methods and material: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 216 randomly selected undergraduate nursing students studying at a tertiary care teaching hospital in Uttarakhand. Data was collected using a valid and reliable questionnaire for self-medication practices with antibiotics and were analysed by using descriptive statistics. Results: Prevalence of self-medication with antibiotics was 78.7% and among them 53.5% practiced it for 2-3 times in past one year. Azithromycin (37.5%) and Amoxicillin (30.1%) were commonly used antibiotics, primarily for the treatment of sore throat (30.6%) and fever (27.1%). The main reasons for self-medication were adequate knowledge of antibiotics use (39.4%), and to save time (30.6%) &cost (13.5%). The main source of obtaining antibiotics was hospital pharmacy (66%) with verbal advice from nurses/paramedical staff (32.3%) and senior undergraduate nursing students (23.7%). Surprisingly, 68.3% participants suddenly stopped the antibiotic use and 52.7% of them changed over the drugs during treatment. Conclusions: High prevalence of self-medication practices with antibiotics among budding nurses is a serious issue; which necessitate educating them with risks and harms of inappropriate use of antimicrobials. Furthermore, sensitizing the pharmacists for not advising and selling antibiotics without medical prescription.