Review on Assessment of Self-Medication and Factors Influencing Self-Medication Practice among Pediatric Population

Abstract

Self-medication refers to patients who use non-prescription medicines, usually over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, to treat certain ‘minor’ ailments themselves without consulting a medical practitioner and without any medical supervision. In pediatric context, self-medication implies administration of medication by the care giver without medical consultation. Parents sometimes exhibit the habit of self-medication for the diseases of their children. Today, children take responsibility for their medications at different ages; children often take responsibility for taking medications at a young age especially when they are suffering from chronic conditions. Children aged 16-18 years are observed to self-medicate for minor ailments like cold, fever, headache and pain. Hence this population is at a greater risk of medication errors and there is a need to improve the pediatric medication safety. Various factors influencing self-medication are patient and care giver educational level, awareness about health, accessibility to medicine and health care facilities, time constraint, ineffective prescription, thinking disease is not serious, ease and convenience, cost of physician’s service development of new technologies (e.g. internet and related communication) is promoting self-medication worldwide. Economic and cultural factors have contributed to the growth and spread of self-medication worldwide. The remaining of the previous prescription drugs which are present at home is used, previous experience on efficacy of the drug. This systematic review of self-medication in pediatric population studies showed that more than half of the populations were self-medicated. Keywords: self-medication, pediatric population.