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Are You at Risk for Medication Errors? Part 1

A new study of paid home caregivers, reported last month by the American Medical Association found 60% of respondents wrongly interpret the instructions on prescription labels. The study was published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine measured several aspects of “health literacy” in paid caregivers and found:

• 85.7 % of subjects reported doing health-related tasks (i.e., medication reminding, sorting, dispensing, and accompanying seniors to physician appointments.)
• Subjects were asked to follow directions on pill bottles and sort medications into a pill  organizer and 60.2% made errors in this task.

This research is the latest study to illustrate the importance of having a medication management system to organize your medicine and ensure you take the right pills at the right time, exactly as your doctor orders. It’s easy to have a “that can’t happen to me” reaction when you read about medication errors. But if you or people you care for take any medication, statistics alone are proof the subject is worth further consideration. Medication use, and medication errors are increasingly common and the results of medication errors can sometimes be quite serious.  We recently added a Research page to our main website, with many eye-opening statistics.  Our next blog post (Part II of this article) will highlight some of the most surprising research, or you can also view the entire page here: Link to New Research Page.