A report by the Institute of Medicine estimates that 90 million Americans can’t fully understand and act upon health information. The U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention, which sets drug standards, today proposed changes to chip away at some of that confusion, at least when it comes to the labels that pharmacists put on prescriptions they fill.
The USP is offering standards that it says will make label information and instructions more comprehensible. For example, instructions to “Take two tablets twice daily” can raise confusion; saying “Take 2 tablets in the morning and 2 tablets in the evening” makes the numbers more explicit and also specifies exactly when to take the medications.
The recommendations also suggest that if it’s okay with the patient, labels should include the purpose of the drug, and in plain language, i.e. “for high blood pressure” rather than “for hypertension.”
And, the proposed standards recommend formatting that can make labels easier to read, including using regular sentence structure, and laying out labels so users don’t have to rotate the container to read them.
Here are the details of the USP’s proposed standards. The group is taking comments at 17PrescriptionContainterLabeling@usp.org until the end of March. If they are finalized, they could be adopted by state pharmacy boards or other authorities.
Drug confusion bonus: Read how sound-alike drug names can hurt patients.