Medication Errors Are Your Fault, and Could Be Deadly

1.5 Million medication errors occur annually. Some of those errors are caused by the labeling process itself.

How many times have you gone to take your evening medication, and been confused by an array of bottles which look just a like, and names of medications hard to discern (or if you can find the name of the medication, the font size is too small to read).

All material for patient education should be a size 12 font. Otherwise, even with glasses, many people will not be able to read the information.
Yet, when reviewing labels from major pharmacy’s nationwide, the name of the medication is 8.9 font size. Interestingly, the name of the pharmacy is often highlighted in yellow, and is 13.6 font size.

So, why does a pharmacy spokesperson say it would be difficult to enlarge the name of the medicine, stating instead, “the instructions are on the detailed material which is provided to the patient”. Oh yes, indeed, the detailed material. Hmmm, how does this play out when looking in our medicine cabinet for our pills. Of course, the pharmacy spokesperson also states that the detailed information should be given to the patient by the doctor. Oh really? So, why do we need a pharmacist at all? Aren’t they supposed to be auxiliary staff to the physician? Aren’t they supposed to support the physician? Additionally, even if the physician spent the inordinate amount of time to provide detailed information to the patient, how would this help at home, when ransacking our medicine cabinet, looking for the correct drug?

The federal government has strict guidelines for how labels are to look for nutritional substances (i.e. our food); isn’t it time that the same be done for our drugs. What type of mistake are we waiting to happen, before we take the horse by the reins and improve the safety of our home drug supply?

Sources

The Caregiver’s Companion, September 30, 2007
http://www.caregivershome.com/news/article.cfm?UID=1529

Consumer’s Affair, September 13, 2007
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/09/drug_ads.html