Pharmacists�???? attitude toward self-medication and antibiotic use in Amman and Irbid cities of Jordan

Abstract

Deniz Mohammad Al-Tawalbeh

This study aims to investigate the pharmacists and practitioners’ behavior toward the counter drugs use without specialist consultation or physician supervision and how antibiotics misuse by pharmacists and practitioners leads to the development of bacterial resistance. A questionnaire was distributed among 200 pharmacist and practitioner who are working in community pharmacies in Amman and Irbid cities of Jordan between December 2015 and February 2016. The results were analyzed using the SPSS analysis programmer (version 19). Among the participants (77.3%) were females and (22.7%) were males. The range of the participant's age was (20 – 30) years and the majority (82.6%) holds a bachelor degree as their highest educational level and all the pharmacists are practicing self medication. Among the reasons of self medication knowledge of medication and disease (94.2%), time saving (77.3%), emergency use (86.0%) and the need to play a major role (66.3%). Although the majority of the pharmacists were aware of bacterial resistance they were using antibiotics as over the counter (OTC) drug and the most antibiotic drug used was amoxicillin (50.6%) followed by amoxicillin + clavulanic acid (44.2%). The use of OTC drugs among pharmacists is high and most pharmacists deny visiting the physician although they have a recurrence of a disease. The use of antibiotics must have further regulations and supervision in order to decrease the resistance that may result from the misuse. Pharmacists must be trained annually to be updated for the regimens that treat minor conditions effectively.