Students’ attitude towards over the counter medicines during exam among Health Sciences students in UiTM Puncak Alam / Karmawan Sharip ... [et al.]

Over The Counter (OTC) medicines defined as the consumption of medications without physician’s consultation and prescription. The purposes of this study are to determine the prevalence of OTC medicines consumption during exam among Health Sciences students in UiTM Puncak Alam, the relationship between the demographic data with the usage of OTC medicines, and comparing the knowledge level among programs under Faculty of Health sciences students. Cross sectional study was use with a total of respondent n=310 in UiTM Puncak Alam, Selangor conducted from September 2017 until June 2018. Students which is range of age 19-24 years old are chosen to be a respondents by selfadministered questionnaire adopted from the previous researcher Almalak (2013) in his research entitled Students’ Attitude Toward Use of Over the Counter Medicine During Exams in Saudi Arabia. Finding shows the prevalence of OTC medicines is low among Faculty of Health Sciences students during exams with 128(41.3%) of students. Among 265(85.5%) of female respondents and 45(14.5%) of male respondents, female students show the higher usage of OTC medicines 103(38.9%) compared to male students 9(20.0%). The age 19-24 years old students and all the Faculty Health Sciences students shows no differences with the usage of OTC medicines. The knowledge level of OTC medicines show that Nutrition and Dietetic programme is the highest as compared to Environmental Health and Safety as well as there is no difference between other programmes. Consuming an OTC medicines need some knowledge to be learned regardless the medium of the information to prevent the misuse of medications.