A Questionnaire Based Ecopharmacology Survey on Awareness and Practice of Patients towards Usage, Storage and Disposal of Drugs in Tertiary Care Hospital of Bihar

Introduction:Globally, the use of pharmaceutical products has increased.More than half of all pharmaceuticals are prescribed and marketed improperly, according to information gathered by the World Health Organization (WHO), which causes an unneeded buildup of medications and poses a serious risk to the environment.Information on how expired and unused medications are disposed of at the consumer level in the research region is scarce.Because of this, it is imperative to investigate how pharmaceuticals are disposed of by patients.Aims/ objective: To evaluate awareness and practice of patients towards usage, storage and disposal of drugs in tertiary care hospital of Bihar.Materials and Method: 207 patients visited the outpatient department of general medicine were included in this survey.The participants were informed of the aim and significance of the research prior to completing the questionnaire.The structured questionnaires were given to them along with appropriate time to complete them once written informed consent was obtained.The interviewer read the options and questionnaire to the illiterate study participants and recorded their answers.Results: 72.95% patients hadn't received any instructions from healthcare professionals about disposal of unused medicine.Most of the patients had practice of storing analgesics (71.01%), followed by antacids (64.73%) and systemic antimicrobials (58.45%).Reason for left-over medicines was discontinuation of drugs due to symptomatic relief (51.69%) followed by changes in prescription by clinicians (18.36%).Most of the patients had habit of throwing unused or expired medicine in dustbin (44.92%) and land (34.30%).Only 3.38% patients had habit of throwing drugs in rivers or water bodies. Conclusion:Lack of instructions from clinicians to patients regarding use of prescribed medicines was highlighted as major threat to ecopharmacology in our study.