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Medicines as Common Commodities or Powerful Potions? What Makes Medicines Reusable in People’s Eyes

Background: Medicines reuse involves dispensing quality-checked, unused medication returned by one patient for another, instead of disposal as waste. This is prohibited in UK community pharmacy because storage conditions in a patient’s home could potentially impact on the quality, safety and efficac...

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Autores principales: Chauhan, Monica, Alhamad, Hamza, McCrindle, Rachel, Hui, Terence K. L., Sherratt, R. Simon, Donyai, Parastou
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8167579/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33924074
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy9020088
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author Chauhan, Monica
Alhamad, Hamza
McCrindle, Rachel
Hui, Terence K. L.
Sherratt, R. Simon
Donyai, Parastou
author_facet Chauhan, Monica
Alhamad, Hamza
McCrindle, Rachel
Hui, Terence K. L.
Sherratt, R. Simon
Donyai, Parastou
author_sort Chauhan, Monica
collection PubMed
description Background: Medicines reuse involves dispensing quality-checked, unused medication returned by one patient for another, instead of disposal as waste. This is prohibited in UK community pharmacy because storage conditions in a patient’s home could potentially impact on the quality, safety and efficacy of returned medicines. Our 2017 survey examining patients’ intentions to reuse medicines found many favoured medicines reuse. Our aim was to analyse the qualitative comments to explore people’s interpretations of what makes medicines (non-)reusable. Methods: Thematic analysis was used to scrutinize 210 valid qualitative responses to the survey to delineate the themes and super-ordinate categories. Results: Two categories were “medicines as common commodities” versus “medicines as powerful potions”. People’s ideas about medicines aligned closely with other common commodities, exchanged from manufacturers to consumers, with many seeing medicines as commercial goods with economic value sanctioning their reuse. Fewer of the comments aligned with the biomedical notion of medicines as powerful potions, regulated and with legal and ethical boundaries limiting their (re)use. Conclusion: People’s pro-medicines-reuse beliefs align with perceptions of medicines as common commodities. This helps explain why patients returning their medicines to community pharmacies want these to be recycled. It could also explain why governments permit medicines reuse in emergencies.
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spelling pubmed-81675792021-06-02 Medicines as Common Commodities or Powerful Potions? What Makes Medicines Reusable in People’s Eyes Chauhan, Monica Alhamad, Hamza McCrindle, Rachel Hui, Terence K. L. Sherratt, R. Simon Donyai, Parastou Pharmacy (Basel) Article Background: Medicines reuse involves dispensing quality-checked, unused medication returned by one patient for another, instead of disposal as waste. This is prohibited in UK community pharmacy because storage conditions in a patient’s home could potentially impact on the quality, safety and efficacy of returned medicines. Our 2017 survey examining patients’ intentions to reuse medicines found many favoured medicines reuse. Our aim was to analyse the qualitative comments to explore people’s interpretations of what makes medicines (non-)reusable. Methods: Thematic analysis was used to scrutinize 210 valid qualitative responses to the survey to delineate the themes and super-ordinate categories. Results: Two categories were “medicines as common commodities” versus “medicines as powerful potions”. People’s ideas about medicines aligned closely with other common commodities, exchanged from manufacturers to consumers, with many seeing medicines as commercial goods with economic value sanctioning their reuse. Fewer of the comments aligned with the biomedical notion of medicines as powerful potions, regulated and with legal and ethical boundaries limiting their (re)use. Conclusion: People’s pro-medicines-reuse beliefs align with perceptions of medicines as common commodities. This helps explain why patients returning their medicines to community pharmacies want these to be recycled. It could also explain why governments permit medicines reuse in emergencies. MDPI 2021-04-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8167579/ /pubmed/33924074 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy9020088 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Chauhan, Monica
Alhamad, Hamza
McCrindle, Rachel
Hui, Terence K. L.
Sherratt, R. Simon
Donyai, Parastou
Medicines as Common Commodities or Powerful Potions? What Makes Medicines Reusable in People’s Eyes
title Medicines as Common Commodities or Powerful Potions? What Makes Medicines Reusable in People’s Eyes
title_full Medicines as Common Commodities or Powerful Potions? What Makes Medicines Reusable in People’s Eyes
title_fullStr Medicines as Common Commodities or Powerful Potions? What Makes Medicines Reusable in People’s Eyes
title_full_unstemmed Medicines as Common Commodities or Powerful Potions? What Makes Medicines Reusable in People’s Eyes
title_short Medicines as Common Commodities or Powerful Potions? What Makes Medicines Reusable in People’s Eyes
title_sort medicines as common commodities or powerful potions? what makes medicines reusable in people’s eyes
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8167579/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33924074
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy9020088
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