Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Over-The-Counter Analgesics among Undergraduate Students in Health Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia

Abstract

Over-the-Counter (OTC) analgesics are one of the convenient and effective pain treatments used in both developed and developing countries [1]. However, depending on how to utilize it, this treatment could lead to dangerous effects and complications [2,3,4]. A cross-sectional study was conducted on Medical, Dental, and Nursing students on Health Campus, USM to determine the knowledge, attitude, and practice of OTC analgesics. The study aims to identify the association of sociodemographic data with Knowledge level, Fisher Exact Test and Pearson Chi-Square was used. This study also aimed to determine the correlation between Knowledge, attitude, and practice of OTC analgesics. Pearson Correlation test was used for this objective. Out of 285 undergraduate students, 199 from Medical, 53 from Dental, and 33 from Nursing were selected through a simple random sampling technique. The data was run in SPSS the was using SPSS version 26. Most of the students are female students (58.2). The finding shows that undergraduate students in Health Campus USM were having a moderate knowledge level (M = 5. 91, SD=1.048) as shown in Figure 1. As for the attitude and practice level, the score revealed 60.4% of students with a good attitude (M= 23.93, SD=3.195) and 61.4% of students with fair (M= 20.26, SD 3.526) as shown in Figures 2 and 3. There was no relationship of any sociodemographic data to be found significant. On the other hand, the knowledge has a significant relationship with (r = 0. 292, p-value < 0.001).  attitude, and attitude also shows significant relationship with practice (r = 0. 220, p-value < 0.001). In conclusion, students’ knowledge needs to be enhanced through the curriculum to improve their awareness of safe medication practice.