Awareness of Antibiotic Misuse and Safety Practices in Saudi Population: A Pilot Study

Aim: To explore the main antibiotic misbehaviors on daily basis, assess the Saudi population awareness with medication safety measures and correlate these factors to gender, age and educational levels.

Study Design: This research is a cross sectional study and the design used a questionnaire survey distributed randomly among public people & health care professional in Al-Riyadh – Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia, in 2016-2017.

Place and Duration of Study: Sample: were collected from people in Al-Kharj and Al-Riyadh during about two months.

Methodology: We included 413 people (82 men, 331 women; age range 18-61 years) which 334 came from public and 79 from health care professionals. These questionnaires were randomly distributed in Riyadh and Al-Kharj. The collected data were statistically analyzed using Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS) software analysis tool (version 22.0). Chi square test with p < 0.05 was used to check for significance of differences in responses.

Results: Results showed that significant percentages of participants were misusing antibiotics due to unawareness or intentional mistakes especially in storage and disposal measures. Moreover, health care professionals declared that most errors were highly related to patient incompliance.

Conclusion: The active participation by health care professionals is fundamental for raising the antibiotic safety measures among the Saudi population and might even be cost effective.