The Japanese Association of School Health

Original Article

ISSN ONLINE : 1880-2400

[School Health Vol.15, 43-53, 2019]

Association between Awareness of Taking Education on Medicines, and Knowledge, Attitudes and Behavior about Medicines among Japanese High School Students

Chihiro Sakai, Kazuhiro Iguchi, Tomoya Tachi, Yoshihiro Noguchi, Shingo Katsuno and Hitomi Teramachi

  • Gifu Pharmaceutical University
  • 1-25-4 Daigaku-Nishi, Gifu-Shi, Gifu 501-1196 Japan
  • teramachih@gifu-pu.ac.jp

[Received August 23, 2018 ; Accepted April 22, 2019]

Keywords:
high school students, education on medicines, medicine use, course of study

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Abstracts

Background: Education on medicines was implemented as part of health and physical education at all junior high schools since 2012 in Japan, after the revision of Course of Study. However, no studies have been done on a nationwide scale to evaluate this curriculum’s effectiveness.

Objective: The aim of this study is to assess the association between awareness of taking education on medicines, and knowledge, attitudes and behavior about medicines.

Methods: We conducted a national cross-sectional survey using an anonymous self-administered questionnaire in 2017. We randomly selected 83 public high schools from each prefecture in Japan and distributed our questionnaires to 15-16 years old first year high school students. The questionnaire included questions concerning gender, health care, medicine use, consulting partner, experience of purchasing, getting and giving medicines, and knowledge, attitudes and behavior about medicines.

Results: The number of valid responses was 17,437 (effective response rate was 98.5%). Of these, 29.5% responded that they remembered taking the education on medicines class, 24.9% responded they had never participated, and 45.2% did not remember. For both male and female students, those who remembered taking the class scored significantly higher on the questions regarding knowledge of terminology, knowledge of proper use, and attitudes and behavior than those who had not taken the class or did not remember.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that a memorable education on medicines class may be effective in promoting students’ proper use of medicines. However, we found that many of the students did not remember taking the class. It is therefore necessary to develop and establish education on medicines programs with validated effectiveness. Furthermore, the results of this study imply that there is a need for further investigation on the implementation status of the class at junior high school.

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