Survey of the Assessment and Reduction of Unused Medicines in Pharmacies

Abstract

Pharmacies accumulate many unused medicines as a result of various circumstances. Once their expiration date has passed, unused medicines must be discarded, and this can have a significant influence on pharmacy management. In the present study, we performed a survey to assess how to reduce unused medicines in pharmacies. Our results revealed that many pharmacies (28.2%) did not realize how much money was being wasted because of unused medicines. This suggests that for a reduction in unused medicines, it is important that pharmacies have a good understanding of their amount of unused stock. The most common cause of unused medicines was that patients for whom the medicines were prescribed did not collect them from the pharmacy. It is not easy to solve this problem; therefore, the measures taken to deal with unused medicines in pharmacies are very important.