Standardizing Medication Labels: Confusing Patients Less, Workshop Summary

Medications are an important component of health care, but each year their misuse results in over a million adverse drug events (ADEs) (IOM, 2007) that lead to office and emergency room visits as well as hospitalizations and, in some cases, death. As a patient’s most tangible source of information about what drug has been prescribed and how that drug is to be taken, the label on a container of prescription medication is a crucial line of defense against such ADEs, yet according to Michael Wolf of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, 46 percent of patients across all literacy levels misunderstand one or more dosage instructions and 54 percent misunderstand one or more auxiliary warnings that accompany those medications. To examine what is known about how medication container labeling affects patient safety and to discuss approaches to addressing identified problems, the Institute of Medicine Roundtable on Health Literacy organized a workshop, Changing Prescription Medication Use Container Instructions to Improve Health Literacy and Medication Safety, which was held on October 12, 2007.