Educating the healthcare community about safe medication practices

From: Helen Dynda (olddad66@runestone.net)
Fri Sep 28 13:25:04 2001


[]]] Educating the healthcare community about safe medication practices (The Institute for Safe Medication Practices) - Click: "Alerts for Patients"

http://www.ismp.org/

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[]]>Information for the Patient:

1.) How To Take Your Medicine Safely: Be an informed consumer

Unfortunately, medication errors happen. They happen in hospitals, in pharmacies, or even at home. And sometimes people get hurt because of these errors."

2.) Key Questions

"Your pharmacist can be your partner to prevent medication errors. Find one who offers services like monitoring your therapy and keeping a complete list in the pharmacy computer of all your medications and chronic medical conditions. Include over-the-counter medications, vitamins, nutritional supplements and herbal products even if you bought them somewhere else. It’s worth the cost. With this information in one place, your pharmacist can help to protect you against harmful drug interactions, duplicate medications and other potential problems."

**NOTE: Because of copyright laws, I have listed ONLY the first paragraph of the above topics.

3.) What You Can Do...at home...in the hospital...at the doctor's office"

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[]]> Prescription Safety Begins in the Office

"Patients need to be alert to the many risks associated with new prescriptions. Typically, during a visit to the physician or nurse practitioner, you may be handed a prescription to have filled at your local pharmacy. Make sure that you know the name of the medication prescribed and its' purpose before you leave the office."

**NOTE: Because of copyright laws, I have listed ONLY the first paragraph of the above topic.

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[]]> Treat Medication Samples with Respect

"A physician may give you samples of a particular medication at the time of your office or clinic visit. Typically, this may done at the start of a new prescription so the physician can see if the medication is effective for your condition and is well tolerated before you purchase a large amount. This is a reasonable idea, particularly if it saves you from having medications available that you can no longer use. (Keeping medications on hand that have been discontinued is definitely not a safe practice!). The best way to obtain samples is when you receive a voucher from your physician that is later filled at your pharmacy. Unfortunately, not all pharmaceutical companies offer a voucher program for medication samples."

**NOTE: Because of copyright laws, I have listed ONLY the first paragraph of the above topic.

**DRUG CHECKER - (scroll down to this form) "Check for Drug Interactions - Use the form below to help make sure that the medications you take do not interact with each other, over-the-counter items, or food to cause an adverse reaction."

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[]]] Request a Brown-Bag Check-up

"If you have a chronic condition, you may routinely take many different kinds of medications. Often, the dose or times of the medication may need to be adjusted as your health changes. Sometimes, you may also have medications ordered by different doctors, particularly if you visit a number of specialists. These situations can lead to a great deal of confusion when taking medications. As a safety measure, ask to schedule a "brown-bag check-up" with your primary doctor or local pharmacist. A brown-bag check-up is when you gather all of your current medications and over-the-counter products into a "brown-bag" and show them to your doctor or pharmacist so he/she can look for any potential problems."

**NOTE: Because of copyright laws, I have listed ONLY the first paragraph of the above topic.

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