Report: Knowing a medicine’s name could be crucial for patient health

Are your pharmaceutical labels clear enough so that there’s no mistaking what’s inside any package? There are the obvious kinds of confusion that might arrive from being vague on this point, but recent research shows that there may be some medical and health dangers in this approach as well.

As quoted in Science Daily, a study led by Jennifer Lenahan recently noted that patients who are regularly taking medication have a better chance of staying healthy if they know the proper name of their medication and use that as a referent rather than other factors like shape or color.

This is in part because pills and capsules can look differently but carry the same medicine, as the report claims, much to potential user confusion.

Science Daily also quoted University of North Carolina’s Dr. Stacy Bailey on this research and what it means for medical practices.

“The work by Lenahan and colleagues further demonstrates the need to counsel patients on safe and appropriate medication use and ensure that every patient has a full understanding of the medications they have been prescribed,” she said. 

This can be increasingly important as more and more prescriptions are written and filled. An article on LiveScience recently detailed that 1.8 percent of teenagers in a survey taken over five years were taking more than one type of medication.

With that much medicine circling around the populace endlessly, there’s the need for well-crafted custom labels that put the name of the drug front and center, leading to both better regulation on your side and on the consumer’s behalf as well.