Influence of the media on the irrational use of medicines among pharmacy course students at a higher education institution

Abstract

Drug advertising exerts a significant influence on the population, inducing self-medication. Thus, it is relevant to investigate whether the population of students in a higher education course is influenced by media resources. Thus, the objective of the research was to carry out a narrative review about the influence of the media on self-medication among undergraduate students and also to evaluate how students are influenced by media resources. The study was a narrative review, associated with a cross-sectional survey of 51 students from the pharmacy course at UNIVISA. It was observed that 82.40% of respondents declared to use self-medication, 21.6% affirmed they had experience of graduation or were using the medication based on old prescriptions, and 15.7% were influenced by media resources. Thus, it is noteworthy that the information exposed in the media resources did not influence on the use of medicines among most of the students.