[Rational Drug Usage Status of Nursing Students]

This study was conducted to determine nursing students' rational use of medicines.

The population of this descriptive study was composed of 1177 students who were studying at a faculty of nursing in Istanbul. The study sample, on the other hand, consisted of 303 students who were selected from the population by the "stratified random sampling" method, a probabilistic sampling method. The sample size was calculated using the Minitab software. Data were collected with data collection form between February and March 2016. In data analysis, percentage, median, Pearson Chi-square and Fisher's Exact test was used.

It was found that the average age of the participating nursing students was 20.25±1.71, 85.5% of the participants were female, 98.7% were single, 66.3% graduated from Anatolian High School and 29.4% of them were in their third year of study. Also, 11.6% of the participants used medicines continuously, 16.2% used medicines frequently, the most frequent reason for using medicines (69%) was pain, 93.7% read the prospectus of the medicines they used, 70.6% took their medicines on time, 86.8% were careful about using their medicines before or after meals, 78.5% did not change doses of medicines themselves, 63% stopped using medicines when symptoms of disease were over, 62% did not always take medicines with prescription, and 97.3% used pain relievers most without a prescription. In addition, there were significant differences between the participants' gender and reading the prospectus before using medicines, between having a chronic disease and continuous and frequent use of medicines, and between alcohol consumption and frequent use of medicines (p<0.05).

The nursing students in our study were found to have inadequacies in some issues related to rational use of medicines (e.g. taking medicines with a prescription, using medicines on time and not changing medicine doses without physician's suggestions). In this context, it is advisable to develop guidance and counseling programs for the development of rational drug use behaviors of nursing students and to include this subject in detail in nursing undergraduate education course curricula.