Community Pharmacists’ Practice, Awareness, and Beliefs about Drug Disposal in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The awareness among Saudi people regarding the good and safe practice of drug disposal is fairly low. Community pharmacists’ potential toward drugs disposal directions and practice are not emphasized enough. Therefore, a cross sectional study was conducted in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to evaluate the practice, awareness and beliefs of community pharmacists about disposal of unused drugs. Out of 360 subjects who participated in the study, more than 70% returned the unused drugs to the pharmaceutical distributors. Around 80% of the participants confirmed the risk of environmental damage due to the inappropriate disposal of drugs, and 87.5% of them held themselves responsible for preventing such risk. Approximately 85% of surveyed pharmacists believed community pharmacies to be an appropriate location for the collection of unused drugs. There was no significant association between the community pharmacists’ age group and years of practice as community pharmacists with either the awareness of unused medication disposal on environmental hazards, or the beliefs about the appropriate location for collecting unused drugs (p > 0.05). The awareness and proactive accountable responsibility, along with community pharmacists’ belief of appointing pharmacies to collect unused drugs, strongly support the institution of drug take-back programs.

Pharmacists knowledge, perception and practice regarding medication disposal

“…Pharmacists were aware that improperly disposed of medication could contaminate soil and water (79.3%), which was similar to the findings in Kuwait 14 (82%), Delhi, India 15 (84.0%) and Saudi Arabia 16 (78.9%), but more than in Brazil 17 where just 16.8% had knowledge of the environmental harm resulting from the contamination of medicinal waste. Improper disposal of antibiotics is considered an overlooked source of increased antimicrobial resistance, 18 but only 45.2% of Trinidadian pharmacists were aware of this risk.…”

“…This was lower than that observed in Trinidad, 11 although the sample size was smaller in Nigeria. In Saudi Arabia, 16 75.3% returned expired medication to their pharmaceutical distributors whereas in Kuwait, 14 73% of pharmacists disposed of medication by pouring it down the sink/flushing in the toilet. In New Zealand, 13 58% of pharmacists dispose of controlled drugs by pouring down the sink.…”

Community Pharmacists’ Knowledge, Willingness, and Readiness to Prescribe Oral Contraceptives in Saudi Arabia

“…Based on the geographical areas of Riyadh, the sample of registered community pharmacists was determined previously to be 2000 CPs [18,19]. The sample size was calculated using the Raosoft online calculator (www.raosoft.com, accessed on 27 February 2022) An estimated 323 participants were required to achieve a 95% confidence interval level and an accepted margin of error of 5% considering a 50% response distribution.…”

Disposal of leftover and expired medicines by community pharmacies and their clients in Ghana

“…Improper disposal methods among community pharmacies have also been retorted in Libya and Iraq (Albaroodi, 2019; Atia, 2021). However, in Saudi Arabia, 70% of 360 pharmacies surveyed return unused expired medicines to the pharmaceutical distributor (Alghadeer and Al-Arifi, 2021).…”