Dhanraj Ganapathy et al., Int. J. Res. Pharm. Sci., 2020, 11 (SPL3), 1389-1392 ORIGINAL ARTICLE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES Published by JK Welfare & Pharmascope Foundation Journal Home Page: www.pharmascope.org/ijrps Awareness on self-medications practices among dental students Muralidharan, Dhanraj Ganapathy * , Keerthi Sasanka Department of Prosthodontics, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences, Saveetha Dental College and Hospitals, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Article History: Received on: 14 Jul 2020 Revised on: 17 Aug 2020 Accepted on: 19 Aug 2020 Keywords: self-medication, dental students, awareness ABSTRACT Self-medication is indeed a practice where patients select and use drugs for either the management of auto-diagnosed physically or mental health prob- lems. It was deϑined as the ingestion of drugs without consultation with a qual- iϑied doctor. The purpose of the research was to evaluate the perceptions and degree of self-medication practice amongst ϑirst-year dental students. This questionnaire-based survey was conducted among 100 ϑirst-year undergrad- uate dental students in Chennai. The questionnaire had 11 questions eliciting the practice of self-medication patterns among the students. The responses were recorded and analysed. 61% of the respondents have the habit of self- medication. 43% said that they take for a headache, 21% said that for stom- ach pain, for fever 25% take self-medication and the rest said that they visit a doctor without taking any self-medication. 56% preferred allopathic med- ication, 9% preferred homoeopathy, 12% preferred Ayurveda and the rest 23% preferred the homemade medicines. 41% use antibiotic drugs, 47%use antipyretic drugs and the rest 12% use antihistamine drugs. Around 71% said that they were aware of a drug overdose and the rest 29% said they were not aware. Self-medication was primarily used by dental students mainly for minor ailments with over the counter drugs. From the survey, we can conclude that there is a large number of students 61 % have the practice self-medication and so awareness must be created on it. * Corresponding Author Name: Dhanraj Ganapathy Phone: 9841504523 Email: dhanrajmganapathy@yahoo.co.in ISSN: 0975-7538 DOI: https://doi.org/10.26452/ijrps.v11iSPL3.3419 Production and Hosted by Pharmascope.org © 2020 | All rights reserved. INTRODUCTION Self-medication is indeed a practice where patients select and use drugs for either the management of auto-diagnosed physically or mental health prob- lems. It was deϑined as the ingestion of drugs with- out consultation with a qualiϑied doctor and the pur- chasing of drugs mostly from the counter. (Bennadi, 2014; Ruiz, 2010) Due to the lack of medical services, the unafϑili- ated availability of over-the-counter (OTC) medica- tions in the regional market is becoming increas- ingly common in a number of countries around the world. Other factors for self-medication include lack of time to see a physician, impossibility to get a timely appointment, minor illness, a signiϑicant dis- tance from home to hospitals, and inevitably high medical fees. (Klemenc-Ketis et al., 2010; Kumar et al., 2013) In fact, the acquisition of a plethora of information from internet media, magazines or journals makes people bold enough to manage their own disease. Nevertheless, people are putting their lives at risk by pursuing self-medication because it can escalate to habituation, fatal allergy, the inade- quate dosage of medications that could not relieve the symptoms, and even overdose that can trigger collateral damage. (Kumari et al., 2012) © International Journal of Research in Pharmaceutical Sciences 1389