Would Pharmacy Students Advocate Green Pharmacy Given Their Preference for Medicines With Environmental Impact?

Objective: To investigate the preferences among university students in Gothenburg, Sweden for medicines that have a different environmental impact with respect to effect and explore to what extent having received information about pharmaceuticals' potential harm to the environment is associated with the stated preferences.

Methods: A survey was conducted among students in different study programs at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. In all, 704 students received oral and written information about the study at the end of a lecture and were invited to take part (response rate: 83.5%). The questionnaire contained items about medicinal environmental information and 2 scenarios with fictious medicines as options for the treatment or symptom relief of minor ailments in humans.

Results: Overall, 53.3% of the students (pharmacy students: 57.8%) had received information about the environmental impact of medicines, and 79.6% (pharmacy students: 80.6%) reported that they had concerns about the consequences. Twenty percent (pharmacy students: 9.0%) named the university as an information source. The students were most satisfied overall with the least effective and most environmentally friendly medicines. Consistently, pharmacy students gave higher scores to the most environmentally harmful medicines, especially compared with medical and health care students. Pharmacy students, who, to the same extent as medical and health care students had received information about medicines' environmental impact, were less likely to state environmentally friendly options with an inferior effect as their preferred choice.

Conclusion: Pharmacy students generally rated the medicines higher than other student groups, despite being aware of the harmful effects on the environment.