A Qualitative Study about Self-Medication in the Community among Market Venders in Fuzhou China

摘要

Despite government efforts to increase health care insurance and access in China, many individuals, regardless of insurance status, continue to engage in high levels of self-medication. To understand the factors influencing common self-medication behaviour in a community of food market venders in Fuzhou China, a total of 30 market venders were randomly recruited from six food markets in 2007. In-depth interviews were conducted with each participant at their market stalls by trained interviewers using a semi-structured open-ended interview protocol. Participants were asked broad questions about their health-seeking behaviours as well as their past experiences with self-medication and hospital care. ATLAS.ti was used to manage and analyze the interview data. The results showed that hospital-based health care services were perceived as better quality. However, self-medication was viewed as more affordable in terms of money and time. Other factors prompting self-medication included confidence in understanding the health problem, the easy accessibility of local pharmacies, and the influences of friends/peers and advertising. Three broad domains, attitude, cost, and effectiveness, were all seen to determine past decisions and experiences with self-medication. Interestingly, the effective management of self-medication via pharmacy resources raised particular concern because of perceived variation in quality. In conclusion, self-medication was found to be an important and common health-seeking behaviour driven by multiple factors. A sound and comprehensive public health system should systematically attend to these behaviours and the pharmacies where much of the behaviour occurs.