A Cross-Sectional Study to Assess the Knowledge of Pharmacy Students About Drug Pollution in Spain.

ABSTRACT

The presence of pharmaceuticals in the environment is an issue of growing concern. The European Commission adopted the "European Union Strategic Approach to Pharmaceuticals in the Environment", which focuses on actions to reduce the risk of pharmaceuticals in the environment, including how environmental aspects can become part of medical training programs. OBJECTIVE: Obtain data from pharmacy students about pharmaceutical pollution to provide information about the training needs that may help develop new actions related to the training and dissemination of this issue. METHODS: A total of 1614 pharmacy students from 5 Schools of Pharmacy in Spain completed a self-administered questionnaire consisting of 24 questions 13 about knowledge, 8 related to attitude, and 3 to opinion. RESULTS: Around 75% of students reported that they did not know "One Health" or "emerging pollutant" concepts and around 88% declared that they did not know that diclofenac caused a catastrophic vulture decline in Asia. The importance of this topic and their attitude to acquiring new knowledge was evaluated higher than 8 points out of 10, while received training during their studies was a score of 2.8 points out of 10. CONCLUSION: The knowledge about key concepts was relatively poor. In fact, they judged training about pharmaceuticals in the environment during their pharmacy studies was very scarce. However, students consider drug pollution to be a very important issue and have a very good attitude toward acquiring knowledge about it.