Parental self‐medication of antibiotics for children in Jordan

Objectives This study aims to describe the prevalence and predictors for parental antibiotics self‐medication of their children and to characterize their knowledge, practice and attitude within this area. Methods This is a cross‐sectional study which targeted parents of children between the ages of 1–12 years. Parents were asked to fill out an online validated questionnaire that aimed to assess their knowledge, practice and attitude to self‐medication of children with antibiotics. Key findings In this study, 332/855 (39.2%) participants had previously self‐medicated their child(ren) with antibiotics. The overall score in the knowledge section was satisfactory (mean = 3.48 out of five); however, the majority of participants (72.1%) did not have the knowledge that antibiotics are solely indicated for bacterial infections. Parents with older age, lower education, not working in a medical field, families with low‐income and lived away from the capital were found to have higher rates of self‐medication (P‐value