Doctors, maybe it's worth spending a few extra moments telling patients how they should take their medicines. According to a study which will be published next week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, patients with inadequate reading skills often make mistakes with their drugs because they have trouble reading prescription labels. At greatest risk are people with below sixth-grade literacy levels and people with multiple prescriptions to manage, researchers concluded. To conduct the study, researchers interviewed 395 English-speaking adults who were waiting in clinics to see their doctors. They found that when patients made mistakes in interpreting prescription labels, 52 percent of the mistakes concerned dosing levels. Also, they noted that less than 10 percent of patients paid attention to warning stickers such as "may cause drowsiness" which appear on prescription bottles.
Learn more about the study:
- read this USA Today piece [1]
Links:
[1] http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-10-medicine-labels_x.htm