Levels of understanding of the rules of correct medical usage among vietnamese pharmacy students: a cross-sectional study

Background. Comprehensive misunderstanding about medicine usage is often associated with high treatment risks which have led to unexpected and adverse effects or even death. Many researches assessing health literacy have been undertaken, but only in adults. This study was undertaken to evaluate the level of understanding in students of medical terms and its correlation with gender, grade and parental occupation. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted from Septem- ber to October 2017 with 594 students (28.6% of men and 71.4% of women) of Hanoi University of Pharmacy from freshman to fifth-year students chosen randomly. The knowledge of pharmacy students was assessed by a questionnaire including 25 medical terms. Descriptive statistics and Chi-square test were used with p < 0.05 as level of statistical significance. Introduction Nowadays, along with the continuous economic and so- cial development, people have to face many health and mental problems which increase the demand for drugs. Increased drug use is often associated with high risks of error, abuse or non-compliance in use leading to signifi- cant adverse effects or even death [1]. Even if the rules of correct administration of medication are followed, many potential treatment risks still exist and greatly increase if they are not followed. Especially, the fact that people in the developing countries usually select the drug-stores as the first-choice when they have any health problems without the doctor’s prescription or follow the social me- dia from pharmaceutical companies which has a great potential for the public to be exposed to misleading or dangerous information about medicine [1-7]. As a result, enhancing the awareness and understanding of people in the rational use of medicines plays a crucial role which helps improve the quality of treatment, reduces costs for patients and society alike and avoids wasting scarce resources and widespread health hazards [8, 9]. One of the first steps to raise people’s awareness about proper medicine usage is the better understanding of medical terminology which is commonly used in manuals or instruction sheets. A proper understanding of medical Results. The level of understanding of students was high with most of medical terms reaching over 70% correct answers. A positive significant association between health literacy and education was found with higher knowledge demonstrated in upper years, while there was no difference among students with and without parents belonging to the medical field. Regarding the relation with gender, there was no significant correlation for most medical terms. Conclusions. Levels of understanding of medical terms in phar- macy students was high, presenting a significant association with education. This study should be extended in order to assess the level of health literacy in various populations, thereby indirect evaluating implementation of medical preventive programs.