Abstract
Background The healthcare practitioners prescribe and dispense different medications du e to increase in the prevalence of disease and this leads to the availability of unused medications, which is mostly due to a change of medication by doctors, side effect of medicines, or patient noncompliance.This study aimed to evaluate consumer’s knowledge about disposal of unused medications,and to find the reasons for possessing unused medication and its type.
Method This is an observational cross-sectional survey conducted in Qassim province, Saudi Arabia, between (1st March and 1st April 2017), using a pretested questionnaire. Data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 21.0, descriptive statistics (descriptive, cross-tab, and chi-square) was used.
Results In the current study, the respondents were 302 of which 39.7% between age 18 and 25 years and over half of them are postgraduate. The majority of respondents (92.4%) reported that they had not used (18.5%) of all purchased medicines due to
expired medications. The majority of respondents (85.8%) reported that they do not know the proper way to disposal of unused and expired medicine. The most common method of disposal of unused medicines was to keep it at home until expired (57.72%) or flush them down the toilet (28.52%) while some respondents (5.03%) state that they gave them to a friend. On the other hand, more than two-third of respondents disposed expired medications by throwing them away in household (75.75%).
Conclusion The majority of respondents in this study confirmed to practice irrational method of drug disposal. Reasons may be linked to the low awareness level of respondents, as well as the lack of systems instructing the recollection of unwanted household medicines.
Keywords
References
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