Self-medication Status among referring patients to Tabriz pharmacies

To determine the most common reasons of self medication، knowledge of people about self medication, to Compare OTC and POM users about knowledge and their sources of knowledge and effective factors on user's knowledge.

A cross-sectional study using a semi structural questionnaire was conducted among three hundred cases of 21 Tabriz pharmacies in 2007.

The most common reasons for self-medication were no need to see a doctor (41. 3%), having medicator at home (34. 0%), reducing cost 26. 7%) and not having sufficient time (13. 0%). Customers received higher quality information from pharmacists than physicians. Sixty percent and 30% of users respectively had much less information about side-effects and recognition between OTC and POM medicines. Effective factors on participant's knowledge of self-medication were education level (P<0. 001), job (P<0. 001), and marriage status (P<0. 001). There was no statistically significant difference between knowledge of participants about OTC and POM medicines, except the name of medicines (P<0. 020). Analgesics (OTC) and antibiotics (POM) were the most wanted medicine.

The results showed that people had much less information about the side-effects of medicines and recognition of the type of medicines (OTC or POM). Effort to increase participant's knowledge about medication is a necessary need especially for OTC medicines those are accessible easily. In this study antibiotics were the most demanded POM medication. Using provided information from pharmacists could be one of the most efficient methods to increase customer's knowledge.