Background: Self-care and self-medication raise the issue of the responsibility of consumers and patients to ensure that the care or medication they select is appropriate to their needs, safe and effective. Equally, they pose several questions for pharmacists.
Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate and characterize the perceptions of pharmacists about self medication pattern of drugs in the patients.
Method: It was a cross sectional study which involved the pharmacist (n=87) working in community pharmacies and the hospital pharmacies who self medicate the patients. A structured questionnaire was prepared which consisted of the basic details of the pharmacists and questions regarding the attitude of the pharmacists regarding the self medication for evaluation.
Results: The majority of the pharmacists were Egyptian (68.96%), with a Bachelor degree (86.2%). Pharmacist indicated that self medication was found to be common among adult (67.81%) males (73.56%). Economical reasons (67.8%) and time saving (58.6%) were cited as an important reason for self-medication. Headache, cough, fever and cold were major conditions for which self-medication was sought by patients and pharmacist justified dispensing of drug for self-medication by patients as the conditions being simple and unwarranted intervention of physicians.
Conclusion: There is a need for self-medication in self-care; hence the role of the pharmacist must be extended. To address this issue, the pharmaceutical societies regulatory agencies should discuss communication, evaluation, quality, screening, training and supervision, collaboration and performance review of the pharmacist to make them more competent for independent prescribing in self-medication in self care by patients.