Mitigating environmental impacts is an urgent challenge supported by (scientific) intensive care societies worldwide. However, making green choices without compromising high-quality care for critically ill patients may be challenging. The current paper describes a three-step approach towards green intensive care units.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Medications are associated with substantial environmental outcomes, yet frequently end up being unused by patients. Waste-minimizing interventions, such as redispensing of quality-approved oral anticancer drugs remaining unused by patients at home, could reduce the environmental footprint of cancer treatment.
Objectives: To assess the environmental outcomes of redispensing quality-assured oral anticancer drugs and to explore how redispensing could be environmentally optimized.
Background: Minimizing medication waste through the redispensing of oral anticancer drugs (OADs) that were unused by patients provides economic and environmental benefits, but this is not yet universally implemented in clinical care.
Objectives: To identify barriers and facilitators to the implementation of redispensing unused OADs in clinical care.
Methods: A multicentre intervention study following a hybrid effectiveness-implementation type I design was conducted, consisting of semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders involved in the redispensing program: pharmacy employees, prescribing clinicians in oncology and haematology, patients who participated in redispensing and patients who declined trial participation.
Importance: New strategies targeting waste are required to improve financial and ecologic sustainability of expensive therapies, such as oral anticancer drugs, that frequently remain unused by patients. Redispensing unused oral anticancer drugs seems to be a promising strategy when drug quality is guaranteed.
Objectives: To determine the waste reduction and net cost savings attained by redispensing oral anticancer drugs that go unused by patients compared with the standard practice of disposal.
Background: Medication waste is a threat to healthcare's sustainability. To prevent medication waste in patients' homes, medication quantities prescribed and dispensed to patients could be individualized. Perspectives of healthcare providers on engaging in this strategy however remain unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Drug-related problems can negatively influence treatment outcome and well-being for patients with rheumatic diseases. Thus, it is important to support patients in preventing or resolving drug-related problems as quickly as possible. To effectively develop interventions for this purpose, knowledge on the frequency and character of drug-related problems is needed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Waste of oral anticancer drugs (OACDs) causes financial and environmental burdens. This study evaluates the feasibility of an individualized dispensing program to prevent waste of OACDs.
Methods: Adult patients were dispensed individualized quantities of niraparib, abiraterone, enzalutamide, ruxolitinib, osimertinib, or imatinib as standard care, during the first 6 months of treatment.