The Pattern of Disposal Practices of Unused and Expired Medications Among Healthcare Professionals: A Cross-Sectional Survey in Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences, Ranchi, Jharkhand

Background: Medicines play a crucial role in treating various diseases. Most individuals, in their haste to get through their day, have developed the bad habit of improperly discarding their unwanted or expired prescriptions, which poses a number of risks to human health and contributes to environmental degradation. Disposal procedures of unused and expired pharmaceuticals among health care personnel at tertiary care centers have been the subject of very little research to date. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine how medical staff at Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences in Ranchi, Jharkhand, handle stale or unwanted prescription drugs.

Methods: The design of the study was cross-sectional analytical conducted among 385 health care professionals. Pretested semi-structured questionnaires prepared in Google Forms (Google LLC, Mountain View, California, United States) have been used for evaluation.

Results: The completely filled questionnaires were analyzed, evaluated, and expressed in the percentage using Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington, United States). The most common method of disposal of unused and expired medications was throwing them in the dustbin.

Conclusions: In this study, although, all the participants were health care professionals, because of the hectic schedule majority of them used unsafe methods of drug disposal. So, in order to protect our ecosystem, appropriate policy should be made to implement the methods for the safe disposal of unused and expired medications.