Skip to main content

Do Patients Know Their Medications?

Do you know what medicines you are taking?  Do you know the doses?  Do you know the purpose of each of the medications? 

These seem like rather basic inquiries and yet you would be surprised how many patients cannot respond accurately to these 3 simple questions.  The medical profession needs to emphasize the importance of patients achieving an adequate level of medical literacy.  Knowing their medications is an important element of this mission.  It is much easier for doctors to care for informed patients.

When a patient is unsure, for example, why he is on Lipitor, we can easily explain this.  It is more challenging, however, for doctors and other medical professionals when patients do not know the specific dose of a drug or if a drug was omitted from the medication list.  This happens all the time.



Now here's a guy who knows how to make a list!


Electronic medical records (EMR) have the current medication list available for the medical staff to review. But, not surprisingly, it is not reliable 100% of the time.  Sometimes, the patient’s written medication list (assuming he has one) conflicts with the EMR’s list.  Or, the EMR may still be including medicines on the list that were stopped months or years ago.  I have also seen EMR lists that include 2 or 3 heartburn medicines and yet the patient tells me his is only taking one of them.  This makes the visit fun when we try to guess together which medicine is real and which are impostors!

I am not faulting patients here.  Many of them are on several medicines with changes in medications and dosages being made regularly.  It is hard to keep track of all this.  Imagine how challenging it is for a patient who is taking 8-10 medicines every day, with dosing ranging from once daily to four times daily, to keep it all straight.

And, if a patient is hospitalized, there’s a good chance that the medication list on discharge will be quite different from the initial one.  It’s understandable that such a patient who is still recovering from illness and may also be facing employment and familial challenges, might not prioritize studying his new drug list. But it is absolutely critical that he or a caretaker do so.

My plea?  Keep an accurate list of all medications – including over-the-counter agents and any other supplements – with the correct doses.  If your regimen is changed, then revise your list.  Bring it with you to every medical encounter.

Remember, the holiday song that contained the phrase, ‘he’s making a list and checking it twice’?  You might have been taught that this was Santa preparing for Christmas.  Actually, it was Dr Santa setting an example for his own patients.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

When Should Doctors Retire?

I am asked with some regularity whether I am aiming to retire in the near term.  Years ago, I never received such inquiries.  Why now?   Might it be because my coiffure and goatee – although finely-manicured – has long entered the gray area?  Could it be because many other even younger physicians have given up their stethoscopes for lives of leisure? (Hopefully, my inquiring patients are not suspecting me of professional performance lapses!) Interestingly, a nurse in my office recently approached me and asked me sotto voce that she heard I was retiring.    “Interesting,” I remarked.   Since I was unaware of this retirement news, I asked her when would be my last day at work.   I have no idea where this erroneous rumor originated from.   I requested that my nurse-friend contact her flawed intel source and set him or her straight.   Retirement might seem tempting to me as I have so many other interests.   Indeed, reading and studying, two longstanding personal pleasures, could be ext

The VIP Syndrome Threatens Doctors' Health

Over the years, I have treated various medical professionals from physicians to nurses to veterinarians to optometrists and to occasional medical residents in training. Are these folks different from other patients?  Are there specific challenges treating folks who have a deep knowledge of the medical profession?   Are their unique risks to be wary of when the patient is a medical professional? First, it’s still a running joke in the profession that if a medical student develops an ordinary symptom, then he worries that he has a horrible disease.  This is because the student’s experience in the hospital and the required reading are predominantly devoted to serious illnesses.  So, if the student develops some constipation, for example, he may fear that he has a bowel blockage, similar to one of his patients on the ward.. More experienced medical professionals may also bring above average anxiety to the office visit.  Physicians, after all, are members of the human species.  A pulmon

Should Doctors Wear White Coats?

Many professions can be easily identified by their uniforms or state of dress. Consider how easy it is for us to identify a policeman, a judge, a baseball player, a housekeeper, a chef, or a soldier.  There must be a reason why so many professions require a uniform.  Presumably, it is to create team spirit among colleagues and to communicate a message to the clientele.  It certainly doesn’t enhance professional performance.  For instance, do we think if a judge ditches the robe and is wearing jeans and a T-shirt, that he or she cannot issue sage rulings?  If members of a baseball team showed up dressed in comfortable street clothes, would they commit more errors or achieve fewer hits?  The medical profession for most of its existence has had its own uniform.   Male doctors donned a shirt and tie and all doctors wore the iconic white coat.   The stated reason was that this created an aura of professionalism that inspired confidence in patients and their families.   Indeed, even today