RESUMO
Background: In the recent years, large number of human pharmaceuticals have been introduced to the environment by landfill when household medications are thrown to trash and liquid medications gain access to the environment via liquid drainage systems. There is lack of knowledge and awareness in the general public regarding the safe disposal of unused and expired medicines. The objective was to assess the awareness regarding disposal of unused medicines among consumers at a tertiary care teaching hospital of north IndiaMethods: It was a cross-sectional observational questionnaire-based study carried out on 220 consumers in medicine outpatient department (OPD) of a tertiary care teaching hospital in North India for 3 months. All the participants were provided the pre-validated self-administered questionnaire. The final questionnaire consisted of twelve questions to assess participants’ knowledge and attitude towards disposal of the medicines. The data was analyzed with the help of descriptive statistics.Results: It is quite evident from the present study that majority of participants 56.36% stated 1-5 drugs were left-over drugs at their homes. Most of the leftover medicines were analgesics in 59.1% followed by antibiotics in 51.36%. Most common dosage form of these leftover medicines were tablets in 85.9% of respondents. Majority of the respondents (55.9%) were not aware of the adverse outcomes of the pharmaceuticals in the environment. The most common method followed by majority of the participants for disposing of the solid, semi-solid and liquid dosage forms was garbage in 95%, 91.4% and 76.4% of consumers respectively. About 9.31% of the participants were in favour of initiating a program to collect unused medications from home.Conclusions: It can be concluded from the present study that the consumers had poor knowledge regarding the safe drug disposal techniques. Therefore, efforts need to be done by the health care professionals to make people educate regarding the safe drug disposal techniques.
RESUMO
Background: The term teratogenicity is defined as any morphological, behavioral or biochemical effect induced during embryonic life or fetal life detected at birth or later. the factors that lead to teratogenicity include both non-genetic and genetic factors. The objective of the present study was to assess the impact of educational interventions on the awareness of undergraduate medical students towards teratogenicityMethods: The present study was a questionnaire-based comparative observational study carried out at Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Government Medical College, Jammu (J&K) for a period of three months from 1st November 2017 to 31st January 2018. The questionnaire was designed and validated by conducting pilot study on a sample of ten students. The questionnaire comprised of two main parts. The first part comprised of questions pertaining to the demographic profile of the students and second part consisted of questions assessing the students’ knowledge and awareness towards teratogenicity. The scoring of the assessment of the performance of the students regarding knowledge of various aspects of teratogenicity was done before and after the educational intervention and was compared using paired t-test.Results: A total of 134 second year MBBS undergraduate students participated in the study. Mean age of students was 19.32±0.82 years. In the present study it was found that before the educational intervention about 98.5% of the students and after the intervention all the students were aware of the term teratogenicity. About 69.4% of students knew about all the causes that lead to teratogenicity but after the intervention about 76.1% of the students knew about it. Also, the percentage of students who knew about the name of two teratogenic drugs and two teratogenic defects associated with drugs were only 31.3% and 22.3% respectively. After the educational intervention it increased to 61.9% and 52.2% respectively.Conclusions: In the present study, it was found that after the educational intervention, there was a significant improvement in the mean knowledge score of the students. This reflects the need of early exposure of students to this important issue of teratogenicity.