Education on disposal of medicines - A concept on safe disposal of drugs in curriculum of Indian Education system

Abstract

The aim of the study was to analyze the availability of safe drug disposal guidelines in the curriculum of health care professional courses like medical, dental and nursing in Indian education system. This was a cross sectional observational study, it was conducted from February 2015 to April 2015 and it was carried to identify and correlate the availability of drug disposal guidelines in the curriculum. The data collected was analyzed and results expressed in counts and percentages. None of the Indian Universities of medical, dental and nursing education had mentioned about drug disposal practice in their educational curriculum, none of the text books in the medical, dental and nursing courses has discussed about pharmaceutical waste management (excluding biomedical waste management) in any chapter and there was no questions asked in examination of last 5 years duration of these courses in these Universities. The results of this study suggested that there is a lack of knowledge regarding management of unwanted medicines and there is a very important need for new educational curriculum for medical/ dental and other health care professionals to minimise this lacuna.