Automedicação e saúde: Consumo de medicamentos entre professores universitários de Campina Grande - PB

Abstract

This work researched self-medication among university lecturers in Campina Grande – PB. Its main objectives were to look at the prevalence, main pharmacological groups used without medical guidance, and the occurrence of problems caused by self-medication. It is a cross sectional study developed with one hundred individuals of the Centre of Science and Technology of the State University of Paraiba. A questionnaire including socio-demographical characteristics, habits and aspects related to medication consumption was applied. The main results show a high prevalence of self-medication (78%) among the lecturers, being headache the major cause (41,9%), and, as a consequence, analgesic and antipyretics were the most prevalence group of drug used (64,4%). An interesting information brought about by this research was that 55% of lecturers did not associate the word drug to a bad thing, linking the word drug only to the illicit ones. Although 80% were concerned with the consequences of drug misuse and 70% had already had problems with self-medication, 81% said medication should be used without medical prescription, and 12% would use antibiotic in this condition. Considering that we dealt with a population of reasonable socio- demographical conditions with enough information, it urges the need to implement public health policies involving all the sectors related to medicine as well as the need to raise the consciousness of the citizens towards their responsibility for their own health.