Recognizing and Reporting Medication Side Effects

Your responsibility for your own health care doesn't end with getting instructions and developing a good system for taking medicines. To stay as healthy as possible, you should PAY ATTENTION TO HOW YOUR OWN BODY RESPONDS TO MEDICINES and BE SENSITIVE TO SIDE EFFECTS.

Why? When you take several drugs each day, you might experience unusual combination effects. One drug may neutralize or strengthen the effect of another. Some of these interactions are well known and are actually used by doctors to your advantage. Other interactions can cause problems. Further, when a person ages, his or her body may absorb the drugs differently than when he or she was younger. Just as an elderly person usually needs less food than a younger person, he or she may need less medicine.

In most cases, if medicines act on your body in negative ways, your doctor can prescribe substitute drugs or drug combinations that can do as good a job without the bad side effects. However, before the doctor can make such decisions, you must gather and report the information to him or her. In some cases, a prescribed medicine will have an unavoidable side effect for most users. For example, some muscle relaxants make the patient feel drowsy. At this stage of medical science, there may be no alternative drug available. You need to be aware of such side effects and take them into account in your plans each day.

Do not believe that adverse effects of medications are necessarily "natural," especially for older people. This may be so in a given case, but the judgment should be made by your doctor.

To reduce the risk of adverse effects from medicines, we recommend the following:

AT EVERY VISIT TO THE DOCTOR, INFORM HIM OR HER OF ALL THE OTHER MEDICINES - INCLUDING NON-PRESCRIPTION DRUGS -YOU ARE TAKING This information will help the doctor avoid prescribing a medicine that will interact negatively with others you are taking. Further, if you already are having bad reactions to medicines, this information will help your doctor determine the reasons for these reactions.

WHEN THE MEDICINE IS PRESCRIBED, ASK THE DOCTOR WHAT YOU MIGHT EXPECT and what you can do if a common side effect does occur. If the effect occurs, you will then know whether it is only to be expected or if you should again contact the doctor.

TAKE MEDICINES AS DIRECTED. Some bad reactions may be caused by taking a drug incorrectly. Perhaps you are taking it too often or in too large a dose, or not often enough or in too small a dose. If you must return to the doctor for advice on how to reduce bad side effects, tell him or her how you've been taking the drug.

BE AWARE, BEFOREHAND, OF WHAT TO DO IF ANYTHING GOES WRONG IN TAKING MEDICINES. Know who to contact and how to reach him or her. Keep the phone numbers of your doctors on hand - next to the telephone and on a card you carry in your wallet or purse.