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Taking Your Medicines Safely

by Linda Richards, RD, MS

If you’re like many people, there will be times when you wonder if you’re doing all you can when it comes to taking your medicines safely. Do you know enough about the possible side effects of the medicines you’re taking? Are you sure about the dose? Did you get the correct medicine at the pharmacy? Are you storing your medicines properly?

It makes good sense to be concerned. According to a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), approximately 7,000 individuals die each year in the United States because of errors related to their medicines. Countless others experience a medicine-related problem or develop a new medical condition due to drug treatment. Sometimes the problem is unforeseeable.

Other times, however, the health professional prescribing or dispensing the drug makes a mistake. Or the person taking it makes a mistake or doesn’t take the drug as prescribed. Here are some ways to help you avoid these types of problems and take your medicines as safely as possible.

Making sure it’s the right drug

To make sure you’re getting the right drug and that you understand why you’re taking it and how you should take it, you need to ask questions at the doctor’s office and at the pharmacy.

At the doctor’s office. You’ve probably experienced doctor visits where you walked out with a new prescription and realized you didn’t really understand what it was. Perhaps the physician or the assistant hurriedly handed you the prescription before going out the door, or maybe you didn’t want to take up the doctor’s valuable time, and so you didn’t ask about the drug.

Number one rule: It’s your responsibility to know about your medicines. Don’t be shy about taking time to ask your doctor questions about a new prescription. If you don’t understand something, ask the doctor to go over it again. You might want to bring a paper and pencil to your appointments so you can write down the doctor’s answers — studies show that most of us forget within 10 minutes what the doctor actually said.

Here’s a list of useful questions.

• What is the name of the drug, and how is the name spelled?
• Why are you prescribing this drug for me? What benefit will I get from taking it?
• How long will it be before I see improvement? How will I know it is working?
• What dose are you prescribing for me — how much should I take, and how often?
• How should I take the drug? (At what time of day? With food or a liquid?)
• How long should I keep taking the drug?
• What should I do if I miss a dose or remember it late?
• What side effects should I watch for, and what should I do if they occur?
• Do I need tests along the way to see if the medicine is working or to make sure that I’m not developing serious side effects?
• Will this drug interact with anything I’m already taking? (It helps to bring to your doctor appointments a list of all the prescription and over-the-counter drugs and supplements that you take, and their dosages, so the doctor can look the list over to check for interactions before writing a prescription. Also, remind the doctor of any allergies you have, or any adverse reactions to medicines you’ve had.)

Ask if the doctor has printed instructions you can take home with you. Finally, look at the prescription before you leave the doctor’s office — if you can’t read it, chances are your pharmacist can’t either.

At the pharmacy. Pharmacies follow strict safety measures to decipher the prescription and deliver you the right medicine at the right dose. Still, some pharmacists are rushed, filling up to 500 prescriptions daily. They also must decipher the scrawled handwriting of numerous physicians, and some drugs have pretty similar names. Errors at the pharmacy are uncommon, but they do happen. Help yourself avoid them by checking the medicines you receive. In addition, prescription labels can be confusing. Surveys have shown that a common error occurs when patients misinterpret the dosage, for example, when they mistake a teaspoon for a tablespoon.

Here are some tips to keep in mind about filling prescriptions:

• Use the same pharmacy for all your prescription medicines. This allows the pharmacist to check for any potential interactions between drugs. Show the pharmacist your meds list, too, so he can check for interactions with over-the-counter drugs and supplements.
• Make sure it’s your name on the prescription the pharmacist hands you.
• Compare the label on the drug to the information you got at the doctor’s office. Are the name of the drug and the dose the same?
• If you’re picking up a refill, compare the pills to any remaining in the previous bottle. The new and old pills should be identical. One exception: If you take a generic version of the drug, your health plan or pharmacy may change to a different version along the way. As numerous manufacturers make generic medicines, the same medicine can come in various shapes and colors. But don’t assume that you’re just getting a different generic version of the same drug — always ask because a different pill can mean the prescriber or pharmacy has made a mistake.
• Have the pharmacist read the instructions to you. If you are still unsure, ask the pharmacist to go over the information again.
• Read any stickers added to the prescription bottles. Stickers are often where warnings are listed, such as to stay out of the sun or not to drive while taking the medicine. The stickers may also warn you if it is unsafe to crush your pills. Despite the stickers’ important messages, only 1 out of every 10 people read them.
• Consider filling your prescription earlier in the day. Most pharmacy errors occur between 4 PM and 6 PM, when scores of prescriptions are stacked up to be filled.

And don’t forget that you can always call your pharmacist (or doctor) later if you still have questions.

Last Reviewed on June 15, 2011

Linda Richards is a freelance health writer based in Alpine, California.

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