Emergency contraceptive pill in high school students at Popayán

The Emergency Contraceptive Pill (ECP) is a hormonal method used by women to prevent an unintended pregnancy after unprotected intercourse. Objective: To determine the practice of the ECP in high school students at the Escuela Normal Superior de Popayan in the second semester of 2011. Methodology: It was performed as a descriptive quantitative cross-sectional study for 98 high school students by applying a survey conducted by the research group had the framework previous studies on the use of ECP in school population at regional and international levels. The instrument included 24 items; the information collected was processed in SPSS. The sample size was calculated based on a population of 723 students (EpiInfo); the type of sampling that was included multistage stratified random sampling (applied by degrees) and simple random (applied within each grade). Results: 14,3% of students used the ECP; 31,2% had initiated sexual intercourse and of these, 50%, had used ECP, that as a contraceptive was second in frequency after the condom (79,8 and 39,9% respectively). Conclusions: The ECP has a high prevalence of use in the students, which makes it the second contraceptive method more used.