Nearly 20 per cent of patients take medicines wrongly

It was recently reported in the Pharmaceutical Journal that almost one in five people admit to having taken prescription medicines incorrectly, according to new research from Lloyds pharmacy in England.

The statistics reveal that over eight million adults have either misread medicine labels or misunderstood instructions, resulting in them taking the wrong dose or taking medicines at the wrong time of day. More than 2.7 million people say that they have confused dosage and frequency instructions for two medicines they are taking concurrently, and over two million say they have continued with a repeat prescription even though they had forgotten why it was prescribed. Almost 1.8 million people also said that they have suffered an adverse reaction as a result of taking medicines incorrectly.

The author states “The biggest issues are among those who are taking more than one prescription medicine at a time, but the problem also seems to be more acute among older patients.”