Perceptions and practices of self-medications among patients

Self-medication define as a human behaviour in which an individual using medication for self-treatment Over the Counter (OTC) drugs. Usually, it is not required a prescription from the healthcare professional. OTC drug is for treatment of common health problem such as flu, cough, fever, headache, colds and muscle pain. In contrast, self-medication must be used wisely to prevent any complication, while the serious health problem patient must see a doctor for any advice before self-medication. The objectives of this research is to observe patients understanding and level of knowledge about the rational use of self-medication, to know what patients prefer when they have a common disease and to investigate the reason for practicing self-medication. The method used in this research is a cross-sectional study, questionnaire, data collection and data analysis using SPSS software to perform result. The result of this research is the correlation between patient’s understanding and patient’s definition, patient’s understanding and definition regarding self-medication, patient’s reasons of doing self-medication and what patient prefer when they have a common health problem. On this research, we discussed about the perceptions and practices of self-medication among staffs and patients. As a conclusion, from the data that we collected by a questionnaire we knows that most of the patients know about self-medication, even though there some of them do not know the definition of self-medication, but still they do have knowledge about self- medication where they know how to treat themselves when having a common health problem.