Impact of education on the knowledge, attitude and practice of disposal of expired and unused medications among pharmacy students

Objective. - To assess the impact of education among pharmacy students on their level of knowledge, attitude and practices in the disposal of expired and unused medications. Materials and methods. - A pre-test post-test study without control group was conducted in which a total of 573 students pursuing Bachelor of Pharmacy and Doctor of Pharmacy programmes were enrolled. The impact of education provided was analysed with the aid of a previously validated KAP questionnaire. Data on KAP was analysed using SPSS software 24.0. Results and discussion. - The knowledge, attitude and practice of the total students improved from 74.17 +/- 17.063 to 91.06 +/- 11.87, 75.92 +/- 19.26 to 91.73 +/- 12.318 and 43.11 +/- 22.77 to 82.06 +/- 16.149 respectively. The improvement with respect to knowledge and attitude was significantly high among Doctor of Pharmacy students when compared to Bachelor of Pharmacy, with P value< 0.001 for both domains. Conclusion. - The present study concludes on the effectiveness of educational intervention in generating a positive impact on the student population with respective to adequate disposal practices to be followed for unused and expired medications. (c) 2022 Academie Nationale de Pharmacie. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.