Consumers’ awareness, attitude and associated factors towards self-medication in Hail, Saudi Arabia

Objectives: To determine the factors motivating the consumers towards self-medication, the intended indications and the consumers’ perceptions about complications that may arise due to its use. Design: Cross-sectional community based prospective study Place and duration of study: Community pharmacies located at various locations of Hail, Saudi Arabia from January 2019 to March 2019. Methods: The subjects of this cross-sectional study were people visiting community pharmacies for self-medication. Data on 663 participants was collected through a validated questionnaire prepared on the basis of WHO guidelines for the regulatory assessment of medicinal products for use in self-medication. Two trained data collectors visited the randomly selected community pharmacies, approached and interviewed the consumers purchasing medicines without prescriptions. Data was entered in SPSS and analyzed using descriptive and inferential analyses (alpha level = 0.05). Results: Out of 663 respondents, 68.6% were university graduates; and 33.9% were healthcare professionals. Consumers preferred self-medication mainly for headache (85.8%), cold and sore throat (80.8%), cough (75.7%) and fever (71.8%) with the justification that these illnesses were minor (90.2%), time saving (82.2%), convenient (74.7%), quicker relief (66.1%), and economical (61.2%). Occupation was significantly associated with the reasons for preferring self-medication (p