Knowledge about Drug Prescription among Urban Menopausal Women in Muang District, Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand

Abstract

In 1990, there were 467 million menopausal women in the world. Each year 25 million of them would enter menopause. By the year 2030 the amount would increase to 1.2 billion, with 47 million new entrants each year. In Thailand, the number of menopausal women had increased to the equivalent of 26 percent of whole country population in 2009. These would appear to have the following symptoms, whole body deterioration and sexual fluctuation occurrence. As the result of hormone imbalance, these women may have risks from potentially making purchases on unnecessary medications without seeing physician. The objective of this study was to evaluate the knowledge of menopausal population about drug prescription use. A cross-sectional survey was conducted on drug misuse among menopausal population in Muang district, UbonRatchathani, Thailand. Data were collected by questionnaires interview in various areas by using simple random sampling. By using the inclusion criteria and the menopausal screening form, 411 suitable women as the remaining subjects. We have evaluated their level of knowledge on how well they understand about medication use both medications that was already taken and would be taken in the future. The number of women who answered that they have both taken some medications and were likely to take other type in the future was 292. The result showed that 50% of them had a lack of knowledge and poor understanding on how to take medication correctly and cautiously. They were not aware that some specific medications should not be taken at the same time, or when to avoid food and beverage while taking certain type of medication. The study also indicated that 21% of them had misused medication of at least 1 type. Knowledge about drug prescription was significantly associated with drug misuse (p< 0.05). Socio-demographis, health status (BMI), health seeking (personal disease), were significantly associated with the level of knowledge about drug prescription use (p< 0.05).  Results suggested that health behaviors and health seeking should be studied further, in hopes of helping menopausal women better understand the risks of medication abuse.