C7 - Green pharmacy practice: Educating our workforce to transition towards a greener profession

Conference Hall B1

Organised by FIP’s Academic Pharmacy Section, in collaboration with the Industrial Pharmacy Section, IPSF and the YPG

Chairs

Safeera Hussainy (FIP Academic Pharmacy Section, Australia) and Bengt Mattson (LIF, Sweden)

Introduction

Health services and institutions, including community pharmacies, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry, produce masses of metabolic waste discharge in the dispensing, supply and disposal of medicines. Unfortunately, much of this waste is deposited into the environment, having detrimental impacts on water supply, soil, atmosphere and living organisms, and especially on sea life where we have seen cases of total population collapse.  

Pharmacists must accept responsibility for changing the medication-use process so as to reduce the impact of pharmaceuticals on the environment. This session aims to raise awareness of the issue surrounding medical waste pollution, which, we believe, is the first step towards achieving green pharmacy. To start the session, the concept of green pharmacy will be introduced as well as the FIP report “Green pharmacy practice”, which is a comprehensive guidance and leadership resource. This will be followed by a presentation on the environmental impact of pharmaceuticals.

Another step towards addressing the problem of medicines waste in the environment is for academia to prepare student pharmacists to practise green pharmacy and be agents of change. This session therefore also includes a presentation on a sustainability pharmacy curriculum for student pharmacists. In addition, participants will learn how green pharmacy has been addressed in an exemplar sector of practice, the pharmaceutical industry. The risks to green pharmaceutical industrial practice will be highlighted, from the research and development stage through to manufacturing, marketing and sales. The actions that have been undertaken to manage those risks and the indicators that have been used to measure their success will also be discussed.

 

Programme

09:00 – 09:05 Introduction by the chairs

  1. 09:05 – 09:30 What is green pharmacy? FIP’s report on “Green pharmacy practice”
    Zuzana Kusynová (FIP, Netherlands)
  2. 09:30 – 09:55 Pharmaceutical pollution in the environment: A growing problem
    Hamza Al-Zubaidi (Pharmacy Practice & Pharmacotherapeutics, UAE)
  3. 09:55 – 10:20 How do we teach green pharmacy practice? Development, implementation and evaluation of a sustainable pharmacy curriculum
    Katherine Gruenberg (University of California San Francisco, USA)

10:20 – 10:40 Coffee/tea break

  1. 10:40 – 11:05 Pharmaceuticals in the environment and the challenges in realizing green pharmacy: An industry perspective
    Jason Snape (AstraZeneca, UK)
  2. 11:05 – 11:30 Redistribution of expensive medicines (e.g. cancer drugs) in hospital settings
    Charlotte Bekker (Radboud University Medical Center, The Netherlands)
  3. 11:30 – 11:50 Panel discussion: Redistribution of expensive medicines in hospital settings and related risks and ethical questions

11:50 – 11:55 Conclusion by the chairs

11:55 – 12:00 Room refresh

Learning Objectives

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

  1. Explain the concept of green pharmacy practice and the key recommendations for pharmacists in the 2015 FIP report on green pharmacy practice
  2. Describe the entry into and impact of pharmaceuticals on the environment
  3. Describe teaching approaches to incorporate sustainability within a pharmacy curriculum
  4. Specify the risks and actions related to green pharmacy in an exemplar sector of practice.

Type of session: Knowledge-based