6^th Global Diabetes Summit and Medicare Expo

Biography

Biography: Nehal mahabbat

Abstract

Background: Stress and anxiety before and during exams represent major problems for medical and non medical students. The use of self medication to alleviate anxiety is increasing among medical students. Objectives: To assess the use of OTC medicine in terms of BB before and during exams among students at Taibah College of Medicine, Madinah, Saudi Arabia. Subjects and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at College of Medicine Taibah University, Madinah, Saudi Arabia. The study recruited 450 medical students of all study years. The data were collected through a self-administered structured questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of demographic data and data about students’ attitude and use of BB before and during exams. The collected data were analyzed using appropriate statistical methods. The level of statistical significance was defined as P ≤0.05. Results: The mean age of the studied 450 students was 21.8 ± 1.7 years, of them 41.3% were male and 58.7% were female and more than one half of them (55.5%) were followed the academic years. The use of BB among the studied students was 9.3%, with significant difference by students' sex and study year. The higher percent of BB use was found among female (14.7%) and clinical year (17.5%) students. About two thirds of the users (28 students) reported that they use BB according to their friends' advice, while 24% (10 students) used BB according to medical prescription. Most of the students using BB reported that they start to take BB during the clinical years (78.8%), with most of them were taking BB before and during internal medicine, pediatrics and surgery exams. Conclusions: The study finding revealed relatively low level of use of BB among the studied students compared to the use of other OTC medicine among students reported in other studies. However, the inappropriate practices of BB as self medication among these students was alarming both the Saudi Health authorities and for the studied faculty administrators.