摘要
Background： Medical students have different perception of symptoms and illness. Moreover, medical students reportbarriers to seeking help about their health, and are more likely to seek advice informally from friends and/or family. It is important toidentify health seeking behaviors among medical students to be able to modify and interfere accordingly. Objectives： To describe thehealth seeking behavior of medical students in UOS and identify the factors affecting those behaviors. Methods： A cross-sectionalstudy was conducted at the University of Sharjah during the spring semester of the academic year 2012-2013. Self-administeredquestionnaires were distributed to all medical students from all 5 years. Questions were related to physical health seeking behaviorsonly. Data was analyzed using the SPSS21 software. Results： We have found that self-prescription was the most common practicedhealth seeking behavior among 91.8%-96.6% of UOS medical students （CI of 95%） followed by the order ignoring a health problem,seeking immediate care, using the internet, reading more about the problem and self diagnosis ＆ management. All are practiced bymore than 50% of the students. A set of other behaviors was identified as well. Factors affecting these behaviors mainly included：self-care orientation ＆ medical education. Other factors that had a role as well were： gender, stage of studying, having a chronic illnessand lack of knowledge about the health services available. Conclusions： Medical students in the University of Sharjah have a high levelof self-care orientation and accordingly, tend to react to their illness in a variety of ways. The most common of these is self-prescription.Studying medicine is the 2nd major factor that influences their health seeking behaviors. Sufficient guidance about the consequencesassociated with certain behaviors may be required.
