Representation of the medication under the bioethics perspectives

Abstract

The conscious use of medicines require the addition of ethical, emotional, social, and environmental dimensions to the rational drug use, such as the understanding of the health/disease mechanism. Our objective was to characterize the idea of medication by different social groups, through a quantitative exploratory cross-sectional study. The participation of 266 respondents allowed us to characterize the relation between self-care and cultural and environmental parameters, as well as the identification of vulnerabilities that were linked to the access to information and education, which was mainly observed in rural respondents and in those who have only had access to basic education. Most of the interviewees had a global view of health, connecting it to life habits and attesting the hypothesis that self-care should be conceived as an ethical principle; however, the specificities of representations evidenced a relation between self-perception and self-management of health. The analysis supported the confluence between bioethics and global health in the promotion of ethical and educational discussions in order to enable citizens to deal consciously with medicines. In this way, it is encouraged self-care and care for nature as means of preventing diseases and allowing the promotion of health and life quality, both to humans and to the ecosystem, at local level, but with global repercussions, benefiting this and future generations.