| Abstract |
Background. This study describes primary school children's perception of medicines, their degree of contact with medicines in their everyday life and the factors shaping their knowledge about medicines. Methods. Participants were 360 primary school children from three age groups (6-7, 8-9, 10-11) recruited from one private and two public schools in the Athens area of Greece. The children were interviewed individually at school. Results. The majority of the children believe in the therapeutic power of medicines. The utilization of medicines is always related to illness and the majority of them do not know to describe the role of vaccines. Higher socio-economic status (SES) is associated with more frequent use of the physician for preventive reasons than lower socio-economic status. A relatively important percentage of children link automatically the existence of illness with the use of medicines although this percentage varies greatly with age and school type. Almost half of the sample declared having easy access to home medicines and this varied with age and SES. Accessibility was associated with higher knowledge. Knowledge of medicines was most adequately explained, having age and socio-economic status as significant positive predictors. Conclusions. This study raises concerns about Greek children's attachment to the biomedical model, less information about prevention, easy accessibility to household medicines. Also socio-economic differences in knowledge show the need to find methods of intervening in education in order to modulate a balanced perception about medicines, so later on, as teenagers or adults, they will avoid over consumption of medicines or will cooperate efficiently, in order to use medicines appropriately, and planning medicine education programs.
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Διερεύνηση των παραγόντων διαμόρφωσης στο παιδί ηλικίας 6 έως 12 ετών της έννοιας του φαρμάκου
