[grego]

I work in hospital pharmacy as some of you know so here's what happens now. Medications returned to pharmacy from patients homes have to be destroyed because we cannot 100% guarantt they are fit to use, storage, tampered with etc. However we now do use patients own drugs in the hospital, all patients are asked to bring in their own supply, which we check and assess for "fit for use". It means that the patients dont miss doses, we dont have to change their brands and we can make sure that the correct medications are prescribed on their In-patient charts, we check if patients have further supplies at home and only supply on discharge if we need to which helps to cut down on waste, hope that answers some of the questions.
I agree it sometimes seems a real shame to throw things away, but can you imagine the uproar if they were used and they'd been contaminated in some way....