Background: Decision on the route of administering a drug depends not only upon the treating physician but Abstract also the patients themselves. The most common route available for most of the drugs is either oralin form of tablets or intramuscular injections. The current study has been done to understand the preferred route by patients and reasons for such preference in acute illness. Methods and materials: 200 patients visiting any of primary health centres attached to the community medicine department of a medical college were selected and interviewed. A Questionnaire was designed to collect their socio-demographic details, preferred route(injections vs. tablets) of drug delivery and reasons for their preference. Analysis of data was done in SPSS. Results: Mean age of the study participants was 38.82±13.01 years.70% patients preferred injections over tablets. The most cited reasons include quick relief from symptoms and absence of gastric symptoms. Reasons for tablet preference were fear of pain during or after injections and cheap cost of tablets. Among the socio-demographic variable (age, sex, education, residence and socioeconomic status) that could be associated with their preference we found those residing in rural area preferred injection by 2.74 times more than urban residence that was found to be statistically significant (95% CI=1.45-5.19, p<0.05). Conclusion: Preference of injection over tablet is more among rural population than urban for acute illness. Key words: Drug; Symptoms, Intramuscular