Practices and Attitude of Self-medication during COVID-19 Pandemic in University Students with Interventional Role of Pharmacist: a Regional Analysis

Self-medication (SM) is a global practice and associated with disease masking, adverse drug reaction, drug-drug interaction, and antibiotic resistance. In COVID-19 pandemic SM become a first choice because of strict lockdown in the country. The current study aims to assess the practice and attitude of SM among university students in the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional web-based study was conducted to evaluate the practice and attitude from March 2020 to June 2020. A total of 520 responses were analyzed using SPSS version 21.00 and a p-value of 0.05 was considered significant. The prevalence of SM was found to be 58% with a mean age of 21.8 +/- 1.9 who practice SM, while females and medical students reported a higher prevalence. The commonest symptoms were seen to be headache (36.56%), fever (34.68%), cough (31.56%), and flu (27.5%). However, majority of the participants use analgesic (55.96%), antibiotics (38.7%), and antipyretic (34.43%) as a symptomatic treatment. The reason for practicing SM was minor symptoms while fear of adverse effects for not practicing SM. Students had a positive attitude towards SM due to fear of COVID-19 and almost half participants practiced SM once-a-day (44.7%). The participants who visit pharmacy meet with pharmacist (42%) to get information of drug use, dose recommendation, duration of use, and concomitant use. In COVID-19 pandemic higher rate of practicing SM was reported. Government should make policies and arrange awareness programs for students regarding SM, and ensure availability of pharmacist at pharmacies to guide them accurately.