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.