Prevalência da automedica？？o na popula？？o estudantil do Instituto Politécnico de Bragan？a

the self-medication is a normal practice today, defined as a common form of self-health care, consisting in the consumption of a product without a medical prescription. the purpose of this study was to evaluate the self-medication level in the bragan？a polytechnic institute students？ population. a cross-sectional survey was carried out in a probabilistic sample including 225 individuals, from a total population of 4168 students, during november 2008. the data collected were treated with the statistical software spss 16.0 (statistical package for social sciences). the level of self-medication was 90,7% and, of these, only 57,4% have the knowledge about the adverse effects. the main reason which led to self-medication was pain, mostly headache, fever, dizziness and sleep, and the drugs generally used were paracetamol (ben-u-ron) and ibuprofeno (brufen).