Our Prescription Labels Aren’t Just Confusing :: They’re Dangerous :: via Project Literacy

Our Prescription Labels Aren’t Just Confusing. They’re Dangerous.

Good - Project Literacy: 4.26.2018 by Katharine Gammon

Think about your most recent prescription medication bottle. The colors, symbols, fonts, and information there each serve a specific purpose. But was that information understandable?

For many people, it’s not. Half of U.S. patients don't understand the health information they receive according to an estimate by the American Medical Association. The average American reads at an eighth-grade level whereas most health care information, including labels on prescriptions, is written for college graduates. And that doesn't even take into consideration people who struggle with English as a second language.

“If I could get the word ‘twice’ off every prescription bottle in America, I could retire,” says Dr. Ruth Parker, a clinician and professor at Emory University in Atlanta. “It’s a simple word to pronounce and say, but what does twice even mean? 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.? Morning and evening? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Parker is part of a research movement to redesign the prescription bottle label. According to a 2010 study, 75% of U.S. adults can’t fully identify a prescription’s indication for use, leading to non-adherence and poorer health outcomes. For adults over age 80, who receive an average of 18 prescriptions per year, the problems can be even more stark.

Although health illiteracy is a global phenomenon, the trouble with prescription labels may be most pronounced in the United States. In Europe, medication is rarely dispensed in “loose pill” form (placed in amber vials as they are in America), says Michael Wolf, a researcher at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Rather, a “unit of dose delivery” (a single dose per package) is more common. “That creates a bit of a change compared to here, especially in terms of labeling.”

“A prescription drug label is the last form of communication we have between the patient and the provider,” says Anandi Law, a researcher at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California. “Patients have to be able to translate all that information into action.” According to a 2012 report by the American Health and Drug Benefits, preventable adverse drug events — including overdose, non-adherence, and interactions — affect more than 7 million patients in the U.S. every year, costing nearly $21 billion.

One of the problems is that different states have different mandates about what should be on a label. In fact, Wolf found doctors in America have at least 53 slightly different ways of writing “take one tablet twice daily” in the United States. In 2013, he ran a study and filled 100 different prescriptions around the country, which taught him firsthand how disparate the labeling is.  READ MORE >>

Literacy Reports & Statistics

Health

2015: Health Literacy & Patient Engagement, 12th AR, US HHS Sep 2015

2011: Health Literacy Interventions Outcomes: Updated Systematic Rvw, AHRQ

2010: Health Literacy, NNLM

2010: Health Literacy: Accurate Accessible Actionable Health Info. for All, CDC

2009: Reaching America’s Health Potential Among Adults, RWJ Foundation

2009: Low Health Literacy, NAAL 2003

2004: Literacy and Health in America, ETS