Health seeking behaviour among medical students in a teaching hospital of Nepal: A descriptive cross-sectional study

Abstract

Introduction: Medical students are more prone to suffer from various physiological and psychological problems but rather than seeking for formal health care, they tend to do informal consultation and often practice self medication. Thus, this study aimed to find out the health seeking behavior of medical students. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was done among first and second year medical students of a teaching hospital from September to November 2019 after taking ethical approval from Institutional Review Committe. Total of 235 students were included in the study and self administered questionnaire was used. Data entry and analysis was done using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20.0. Results: Among 235 students who participated in the study, 172 (73%) reported having health problems in the last 12 months, and fever and headache were commonly reported by 21 (13%) and 18 (50%) students, respectively. Total of 112 (65%) students visited hospital/clinic for health problems and reason given for not visiting hospital/clinic was 12 (28%) thinking that the problem was minor. University hospital was the most preferred place 189 (80%) during health problem and parents were the first people for consultation 116 (49%). Mean duration of absenteeism was 2.17±4.1 days and 167 (88%) visited hospital more than five times. Conclusions: Health problems were common among students and most of them required multiple hospital visits. Many students seeked for health from hospital/clinic but informal consultations were also seen.