Abstract

Background: The abuse of prescription drugs is considered as an important
challenge for societies. Regarding many factors contributing to this challenge
and its negative impact especially on young and educated people, there is an
attempt in this paper to survey the impact of education on knowledge and
attitude of medical students about the abuse of prescription drugs.
Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study which was conducted on
medical students. Two groups of 53 medical students were selected as
participants for both intervention group and control group.These participants
were studied using the researcher-made questionnaires about knowledge and
attitude towardthe abuse of prescription drugs.
Results: Education plays a significant role in both raising the
students’awareness and changing their attitude about the abuse of
prescription drugs (p value < 0.0001). The age variable had a significant
relationship with pre-training knowledge. The female participants had less
pre-training knowledge about drug abuse (p value < 0.001) so that it was not
observed after intervention.
Conclusion: It is suggested that education can be considered as a strategy to
prevent drug abuse and reduce the demand for drug abuse by raising the
awareness and amending the attitudes as well as promoting the anticonsumption
culture