Knowledge and Disposal Practice of Leftover and Expired Medicine: A Cross-Sectional Study from Nursing and Pharmacy Students’ Perspectives

Adel Bashatah and Syed Wajid
Additional contact information
Adel Bashatah: Department of Nursing Administration and Education, College of Nursing, King Saud University, Riyadh 11362, Saudi Arabia
Syed Wajid: Department Clinical Pharmacy, Drug and Poison Information Centre, College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 6, 1-8

Abstract: The objective of the present study was to investigate the knowledge and practices concerning unused and expired medicine among pharmacy and nursing students at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional study design was used. The study used a validated paper-based, self-administered questionnaire. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS, Version 24. The response rate was 70.4% (n = 352). The results indicated that 57.4% of pharmacy students and 53.4% of nursing students check the expiry date of medicine before procuring, and 37.6% of pharmacy students and 52.5% of nursing students keep unused medicine until it expires. With regard to disposal, 78.9% of pharmacy students and 80.5% of nursing students reported discarding expired medicine in household garbage or flushing it down a sink or toilet. Only a small percentage returns leftover medicine to a medical store. There was a statistically significant difference between pharmacy and nursing students in regard to checking the expiry date of medicine before procuring ( p = 0.01), and keeping unused medicine until it expires ( p = 0.03). The study concluded that the majority of respondents dispose of medicine unsafely. The findings suggest that creating awareness regarding proper medicine disposal procedures among university health care students in Saudi Arabia is needed.

Keywords: Expired; Medicine; Unused; Nurses; Pharmacist; Saudi Arabia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/6/2068/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/6/2068/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:6:p:2068-:d:334851

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().