Pharmacies Don ’t Know How to Dispose of Leftover Opioids and Antibiotics

Today (Dec. 30), a team of researchers from the University of California, San Francisco and the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., published the results of an investigation into whether or not pharmacy workers could provide accurate information on the disposal of two classes of drugs: opioids and antibiotics. The results are frightening: The researchers enlisted volunteers to place calls to nearly 900 pharmacies in California, posing as parents with leftover antibiotics and opioids from a “child’s” recent surgery. They asked the pharmacy employees on the line—either pharmacists or pharmacy technicians—how to deal with these unused drugs, and then the researchers compared those answers to the guidelines for correct disposal published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The found that approximately 43% of pharmacy workers responded accurately on how to deal with antibiotics; just 23% knew what to do with opioids. Drug disposal is one of those vexing problems where people generally want to do the right thing, but often simply don’t know how. As Hillary Copp, associate professor of urology at UCSF and the senior author of the study noted in a press release, “The FDA has specific instructions on how to dispose of these medications, and the American Pharmacists Association has adopted this as their standard. Yet it’s not being given to the consumer correctly the majority of the time.” According...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized data visualization embargoed study Pharmaceuticals Source Type: news