Background:
We found medicines leftover in our houses and often they get expired. Throwing away such medicines can cause significant harm to our surroundings. Medical students are future practitioners and should be aware of the importance of safe disposal of medicines.
Aim:
To assess the awareness, knowledge, attitude and practices among the Phase III MBBS students regarding safe disposal of unused and expired household medicines.
Methods:
It was a cross sectional, observational, questionnaire-based study carried out after approval by the Institutional Ethics Committee in Phase III MBBS students of a government teaching institute. After obtaining informed consent, 102 (n) of 123 participants were enrolled in the study and their responses were recorded on a pre-validated questionnaire form. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics with Microsoft Windows 11.
Results:
We observed that the students never had heard about Eco-pharmacovigilance and lack the knowledge about methods of safe disposal of expired medicines but had good attitude about the safety of environment. They were willing to update themselves regarding the safe drug disposal methods (86%) and other measures of safety of environment. Majority opined that there should be system to collect the unused/expired medicines from houses (84 %). Though the student were not knowing the standard drug disposal methods, few of them had practiced the method of returning the unused medicines to medical stores (17%).
Conclusion:
Our study brought forward the fact that the Phase III MBBS students of government teaching institute were not much aware of standard safe drug disposal methods for household medicines and Eco-pharmacovigilance.
Key words: Awareness, Drug disposal, Medical students, Unused and expired medicines
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