Self-medication is any effort to cure one self from illness using medicines, traditional medicines or other means without consulting health professionals. Selfmedication is usually taken for mild illness and if whose not help patients tend to seek medication from community health center. The aims of study were to obtain the proportion and self-medication pattern from outpatients of community health center.
A cross sectional study has been done to 2400 adult outpatients of community health center in 8 districts. This study is part of "Implementation Trial of The Assessment Guideline on Drug Management and Financing at District Health Facilities in East Java and West Sumatra Provinces in 2002. From each district were taken 5 community health centers, and each community health center were taken 60 adult outpatients by accidental sampling. Data collection was done on interview using questionnaire by staff of community health center. Data were analyzed descriptively using proportion and frequency tables.
Result of study shown that : (1) proportion of adult outpatients of community health center that had taken self medication was 16.6-40.5% with average 31.7%, (2) ineffective self-medication caused the expensive medication and inefficiency in time, and (3) most outpatients of community health centers had self-medication using medicines, the source of self medication information are from friends/ neighbors, doing self medication based on their own will, and also the reason of doing self medication because mild illness and efficiency in time, and