Characteristics of nursing students' self-medication in the COVID-19 pandemic

Self-medication is a common application worldwide, resulting in financial, spiritual and health losses. This descriptive study was conducted to assess self-medication prevalence in nursing students in the COVID-19 pandemic and the influencing factors. The study was carried out with 560 students who were receiving education in KırĢehir Ahi Evran University Faculty of Health Sciences nursing department during the 2020-2021 academic year and agreeing to participate in the study. In the study, 61.40% of the population was reached. The data were collected using the "Data Collection Form" which was prepared by the researchers upon the relevant literature review. In the data analysis, number, percentage, mean, and Chi-square test were used. It was determined that more than half of the nursing students who participated in the study (63.6%) applied to self-medication, they used medication mostly due to headache, cold/flu and period pain and the most frequently used medication was analgesic (69.8%). The most frequent self-medication reasons of the nursing students were taking the same drug before (56.2%), having medical knowledge about the drug (26.8%), having the drug available at home (26.8%), considering health problem unimportant (16.8%), having an emergency situation (14.6%) and the pandemic (COVID-19) (13.4%). It was determined that there was no statistically significant difference between the self-medication and sociodemographic characteristics of the students (p>0.05). The students, whose mother's educational background was secondary education and above and those who kept drugs in a medicine chest, fridge or cupboard at home, had a higher rate of self-medication. The nursing students had a very high rate of self-medication. It is recommended that nursing undergraduate curricula include the subject of self-medication. In addition, it is recommended to train students on the outcomes of self-medication. Keywords: Self-medication, nursing student, drugs.