Drugs on a medical campus. III. Drug use among nursing and paramedical personnel.

Fifty nurses and 50 paramedical staff working in the Rajendra Hospital and Medical College, Patiala, were studied by means of a structured, self-report questionnaire. The life-time prevalence of drug use among nurses was comparatively low--55%, compared to 81% among the paramedical staff. Current use of drugs as shown by the 30-day prevalence rate was also very low among the nurses, a majority of whom restricted themselves to using tranquillizers and sedatives for the specific purpose of relaxation or inducing sleep; only a few had experimented with alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco. On the other hand, the most commonly used drug among the paramedical personnel was alcohol, followed by sedatives, tranquillizers, cannabis and tobacco, most of them taking the drug for social reasons or for the thrills from the effects of the drug. This is also reflected in the comparatively higher number of paramedicals who felt that they would probably continue to use these drugs in the future, as also the fact that there were a few dependent users of opium and narcotics in this group.