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Study: Patients confused by medication labels

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annals of internal medicine
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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

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Perhaps the problem here lies with the design and not with the user. A detailed operational analysis of pill-taking behaviors would yield spectacularly clear data pointing to the design of appropriate antecedant devices, positive reinforcement of appropriate medication use and compliance confirmnation.

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