• TaiBik-Wai BilvickBWSchool of Health Sciences, Caritas Institute of Higher Education, Hong Kong., Micah Hata, Stephanie Wu, Sonya Frausto, and Anandi V Law.
• School of Health Sciences, Caritas Institute of Higher Education, Hong Kong.
• J Eval Clin Pract. 2016 Oct 1; 22 (5): 653-61.

Rationale, Aims And ObjectivesLack of familiarity with proper medication disposal options among patients can lead to personal and environmental safety concerns, besides signalling non-adherence. Given that community pharmacists are in a position to educate patients, this study assessed community pharmacists' knowledge on medication disposal and examined the utility of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) in predicting their intention to provide medication disposal education to their patients.MethodsA cross-sectional, self-administered survey was distributed to community pharmacists in California. Descriptive statistics were reported for all survey items. Cronbach's alpha and Pearson correlation were used to determine the reliability for the four TPB constructs (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and intention). Multiple linear regressions were performed to predict intent using the other three TPB constructs.ResultsPharmacists (n = 142) demonstrated a positive intention to provide education (mean = 5.91 ± 1.22; range: 2 to 8), but most (67.9%) provided this information once a month or less. Attitude (β = 0.266, P = 0.001), subjective norm (β = 0.333, P < 0.001) and perceived behavioural control (β = 0.211, P = 0.009) were significant predictors of intention, accounting for 40.8% of the variance in intention to provide disposal education. Scale reliability ranged from 0.596 to 0.619 for the four constructs. Few pharmacists accurately selected all of the appropriate recommendations of disposal for non-controlled and controlled substances (15.9% and 10.1%, respectively).ConclusionPharmacists showed favourable attitude, subjective norm, perceived behaviour control and intention in providing such education. However, their knowledge in this area may be lacking and they are not consistently providing this information to their patients.© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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