Assessment of Parent’s Knowledge and Attitude Medication with Over the Counter Medicines at EL-Hag Yusuf Khartoum State 2021

Abstract

Abstract ' Background: Most drugs in children are used outside the health settings with or without prescription. The family initial response to many illnesses in their children has been found to be self - medication. Objective: this study aimed to assess parents’ Knowledge and Attitude regarding Self-medication with Over-The-Counter medicines. Methodology: The study is a descriptive cross-sectional community-based. A study conducted at Khartoum state East Nile locality (160) of parents were enrolled in the study. The data were collected by using a questionnaire, and then they were processed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 25. Presented in simple frequency tables, figures and cross tabulation. The statistical significance was set at p 5 0.05. Results: The most common reason for using self-medication was saving the time about (56.9%.) and the most common source of information about medication (61.9%) was Pharmacist. (64.4%) of participants double the dose if medication not effective. Fever and cough being the dominant health problems for used Over-the- counter medicine (36.2% )and (23.1%) respectively. Cough syrup, Antibiotics and paracetamol were the main categories of medications that are mostly used by parents (26.2%) ,(16.2%) and (16.2%) respectively. there is a significant association p 5 0.05. between common health problems for which medicine was used Over the Counter and health insurance of the children. Conclusion: The current study revealed that parental self-medication is a common practice. The researcher suggested raise of awareness of parents about harmful impact of self- medication on health consequences of their children. Easy accessibility of healthcare services and reducing waiting time by scheduling the time of attendance when making an appointment. IV