Problems on Inappropriate Drug Storages Identified from Medications Brought to Hospitals by Patients with Chronic Diseases during their Hospitalization

Abstract

Objective: To identify important and common problems in drug storage in hospitalized patients with chronic diseases. Methods: The study was a descriptive study collecting the data by observing drugs taken from home to the hospital by 1,046 patients with chronic illnesses during their hospitalization between March-September 2019.Pharmacists observed drugs’ physical appearances to discover problems in tablet identification and quality. Pharmacists provided appropriate intervention and asked the patients on drug administration the discharge to ensure patients’ understanding on drug use. Results: Most of the patients were male (56.9%), aged 61-80 years (40.1%) and had care-givers prepare their drugs (41.1%). The number of drug items brought to the hospital was 4-6 item (40.1%). A total of 483 drug storage problems were found in 394 patients (37.7%). The majority of the problems was pill identification (366 problems or 75.58%). The first two major problems were drug packages without labels on drug use (149 problems or 40.71%) and the problem of patients receiving the same drug from multiple sources or with tradenames or with different Lot number (122 problems or 33.33%). The study identified 117 problems on drug quality (24.22%). Most of the problems found were dirty medicine bags with contaminant in medicine bags (79 problems or 67.52%). Conclusion: The most common and important problem in drug storage of chronic disease patients was the absence of drug labels or instruction of drug use, having same drugs with multiple tradenames, and dirty drug packages with contaminants. Such information is useful to develop interventions and to guide patient counseling on the discharge to ensure safety use of drug.