Chauhan Monica, Alhamad Hamza, McCrindle Rachel, Hui Terence K L, Sherratt R Simon, Donyai Parastou
Reading School of Pharmacy, University of Reading, Reading RG6 6AP, UK.
Department of Pharmacy, Zarqa University, Zarqa 132222, Jordan.
Pharmacy (Basel). 2021 Apr 20;9(2):88. doi: 10.3390/pharmacy9020088.
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.
Thematic analysis was used to scrutinize 210 valid qualitative responses to the survey to delineate the themes and super-ordinate categories.
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.
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.
药品再利用是指将一名患者退还的经过质量检查且未使用的药品调配给另一名患者，而不是作为废物处理。在英国社区药房，这是被禁止的，因为患者家中的储存条件可能会对退还药品的质量、安全性和有效性产生潜在影响。我们在2017年进行的一项关于患者药品再利用意愿的调查发现，许多人赞成药品再利用。我们的目的是分析定性评论，以探究人们对于使药品（不）可再利用因素的理解。
采用主题分析法对该调查的210条有效定性回复进行审查，以确定主题和上级类别。
出现了两类观点，即“药品是普通商品”与“药品是强效药剂”。人们对药品的看法与其他普通商品密切相关，这些商品从制造商流向消费者，许多人将药品视为具有经济价值的商业商品，从而认可其再利用。较少的评论符合将药品视为强效药剂的生物医学观念，即药品受到监管，其（再）利用受到法律和道德界限的限制。
人们支持药品再利用的信念与将药品视为普通商品的观念相符。这有助于解释为什么将药品退还社区药房的患者希望这些药品能够被回收利用。这也可以解释为什么政府在紧急情况下允许药品再利用。
