What You Need To Know About Your Prescription Medication
Make sure to double-check that you are leaving a pharmacy with the right medication.
There are certain measures in place that protects a patient’s health and safety before receiving a prescription medication. Since prescription medications are stronger than medications sold over the counter, the purchasing process is highly regulated. In order to ensure a safe experience, it is important that a patient takes their own precautions as well.
The prescription process begins with your family physician writing a prescription with detailed instructions on how to take the medication. Next, your pharmacist receives this information and double checks to ensure that the information filled out in the prescription is accurate and safe for the patient to take.
When dealing with prescriptions, there are certain things about the ordering process that would be beneficial for patients to know. For instance, reading hand-written prescriptions can be a challenge for pharmacists and has resulted over 7000 deaths related to reading-related mistakes [1]. So, it is vital that you and your pharmacist double check that you are receiving the correct type and dosage of medication.
Children are another safety risk that parents must give special attention towards. Child-resistant lids for medication bottles are the ideal preventative measure, reducing the danger when a child has a bottle of medication in their hand.
It is also important to be well-informed in regards to the kind of medication you are taking. There has been a noticeable decrease of risk perception on the danger of prescription drugs by 20% over the last 20 years, which is a dangerous proposition [2]. There are numerous cases of preventable medication errors each year that causes harm to patients. Knowing the exact instructions and the dangers of accidental overdose is crucial to preventing these accidents.
[1] Caplan, Jeremy. Time. Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1578074,00.html
[2] U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Retrieved from: http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm220112.htm