Reducing Your Risk for Drug Interactions

It is estimated that 100,000 annual injuries and deaths occur from drug interactions. The national health coalition is working on ways to reduce medical errors including dangerous drug interactions. Patients should tell their doctors about every medicine, including vitamins, they take and insist on drug information they can understand before accepting new medicine. Pharmacists and doctors should use computers to check prescriptions for drug interactions and errors. It is impossible to expect physicians to keep every dangerous drug interaction in mind now with all the flood of new drugs and new ways to use drugs. Computers could do this for them.

Patients should ask the following five sets of questions before accepting drugs:

• Is this the drug my doctor (or other health care provider) ordered? What is the trade or generic name of the medication?

• What is the drug for? What is it supposed to do?

• How and when am I supposed to take it, and for how long?

• What are the likely side effects? What do I do if they occur?

• Is this medicine safe to take with other over-the-counter or prescription medications, or dietary supplements, that I am taking? What food, drink, activities, dietary supplements or other medications should be avoided while taking medication?

On average, 7% to 8% of hospitalized patients will have an adverse drug event, and an overwhelming majority of them are preventable if these steps would be taken.

by Carol Glasscock, MS,PT