Compliance of good storage practices of pharmacies and medicine outlets: a scoping review

Ensuring good storage practices (GSPs) of medicine outlets is important to maintain and ensure the safety, quality, and efficacy of dispensed medicines. The objective of this scoping review was to determine the most common GSP compliance issues within pharmacies and medicine outlets. PRISMA extension for scoping reviews guidelines were followed, and PubMed and Google Scholar were searched to identify the relevant primary literature from January 2016 and February 2022. All study designs in English were eligible for inclusion as long as they reported quantitative data for the fulfilment of individual GSP activities. Duplicate independent screening of the search results was undertaken. Quality assessment was performed on studies for final inclusion. Data extraction was performed by one reviewer, and the observed aggregate percentage compliance (% compliance), along with 95% confidence interval for the root GSP operation, was calculated. Of the 380 records identified, 15 articles were included. The studies were conducted in 10 countries and the majority were participatory research studies. Fire safety had the lowest aggregate % compliance (0.9%). Controlled substance, climate, light, ventilation and temperature and stock and bookkeeping operations all had overall aggregate % compliance levels below 50%. Despite evidence of basic controls and measures, we identified low compliance for many GSP operations. To ensure the integrity of medicines, it is important to increase the enforcement of security measures, invest resources in personnel training, account for informal vendor practices, and facilitate sharing global data publicly from external and governing body inspections and reviews of storage practices.