About a third of adults misinterpret medical instructions
Instructions for prescription medications may seem clear, but they often lead to different interpretations. New research suggests that misunderstandings and errors related to health information and medication instructions are widespread.
Nearly a third of middle-aged Americans have difficulty with personal health tasks such as remembering information from a doctor's appointment, reading standard health materials and correctly dosing medications, according to research published Wednesday in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
Many of the survey participants already had experience with the healthcare system - some were dealing with multiple chronic illnesses.
"Our study was really able to give people some validation," said study co-author Abigail Vogeley, a researcher and doctoral candidate at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. "They are not alone in feeling confused by the health care system and medications."
"It's something that we as a healthcare system need to improve and help people deal with, rather than just saying, 'OK, good luck.'
The study asked 942 primary care patients, with an average age of 52, to complete a series of tasks to test their level of health literacy - that is, their ability to accurately interpret, understand and utilize the information given to them.
These tasks included simulating a doctor's appointment in which participants were given a new diagnosis and observing what information they could remember and report, as well as giving participants a bottle of fake medicine and observing what information they could glean from reading the label and instructions.
Just 10 minutes later, people were having trouble remembering all the details of the diagnosis they received, Vogeley said. Furthermore, problems with prescriptions often arose from nuances in language and variation in labeling practices, he added.
People wanted to get accurate information about their prescriptions and do the best they could for their health, but promoting health literacy can be difficult when doctor visits are short and information may not be written clearly, said study senior author Dr. Michael Wolf, professor of medicine and director of Northwestern's Center for Applied Health Research on Aging.
In general, medications work best when taken as directed.
When taking a prescription medication, whether with food, the frequency of administration or even the purpose of treatment can get lost in communication, especially when patients don't feel comfortable asking questions of their healthcare providers, said Dr. Jan Carney, president of the American College of Physicians and professor of medicine at the University of Vermont's Robert Larner School of Medicine.
According to Vogeley, misunderstandings in instructions can lead a patient to take too little or too much of a medication, to take it with another medication with which it should not be combined, or to take it in a way that makes it more prone to side effects.
Source: CNN