Health Seeking Behavior among Medical Students in the University of Sharjah

Background: Medical students have different perception of symptoms and illness. Moreover, medical students report barriers to seeking help about their health, and are more likely to seek advice informally from friends and/or family. It is important to identify health seeking behaviors among medical students to be able to modify and interfere accordingly. Objectives: To describe the health seeking behavior of medical students in UOS and identify the factors affecting those behaviors. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at the University of Sharjah during the spring semester of the academic year 2012-2013. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to all medical students from all 5 years. Questions were related to physical health seeking behaviors only. Data was analyzed using the SPSS21 software. Results: We have found that self-prescription was the most common practiced health seeking behavior among 91.8%-96.6% of UOS medical students (CI of 95%) followed by the order ignoring a health problem, seeking immediate care, using the internet, reading more about the problem and self diagnosis & management. All are practiced by more than 50% of the students. A set of other behaviors was identified as well. Factors affecting these behaviors mainly included: self-care orientation & medical education. Other factors that had a role as well were: gender, stage of studying, having a chronic illness and lack of knowledge about the health services available. Conclusions: Medical students in the University of Sharjah have a high level of self-care orientation and accordingly, tend to react to their illness in a variety of ways. The most common of these is self-prescription. Studying medicine is the 2nd major factor that influences their health seeking behaviors. Sufficient guidance about the consequences associated with certain behaviors may be required.