Ask Mr. Senior
Avoiding Potentially Harmful Medication Errors 

By Ron Smith 

Dear Mr. Senior: I've heard some terrible stories about seniors getting sick because of medication errors. What do I have to do to avoid those same problems? ­ Sandra, Concerned Senior

Dear Sandra: What you may not know is just how far ranging the problem is. According to a report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, as reported online in Senior Journal, medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people in the USA every year, most of them seniors.

Seniors often juggle several medications, and the more medications a patient takes the more likely there are to be potentially damaging side effects and bad interactions. Not to mention outright mistakes brought about by carelessness.

As reported by Catholic Family online, here is a list of seven common medication errors seniors make:

• Treating non-prescription drugs as if they were candy. Medication errors are not confined to prescription drugs. Add over-the-counter drugs to the list. Unfortunately, seniors often consider these medications to have less serious consequences than prescription drugs. They can be dead wrong.
• Not tracking daily medications. Seniors who fail to adhere to a rigorous and disciplined schedule for taking their medications risk overdosing or under-dosing, often with debilitating, and sometimes fatal, consequences.
• Failing to determine how new prescribed medications (over-the-counter drugs included) react with other drugs, including herbs or homeopathic medicines. Some combination of drugs can neutralize the effect of one or more of the drugs ingested, induce perilous side effects, and even produce fatal reactions. The best practice is to review the list with both your pharmacist and your primary physician.
• Not keeping a record handy of the type of drugs and dosages taken, including over-the-counter drugs, herbs, and homeopathic medicines. This list becomes important when you go to the emergency room, are scheduled for surgery, or start with a new doctor or specialist. The surgeon, doctor, and especially the anesthesiologist, will need to consider the medications you're taking to minimize health risks. Include on the list allergies and drug reactions. Keep the list tucked away in your wallet or purse and carry it with you at all times.
• Taking somebody else's medication or allowing somebody else to take your medications. That's plain foolishness, and it could get you in serious trouble. For example, a senior doesn't finish his antibiotic prescription and his wife helps herself to the medicine in the hope that it will cure her head cold or aching body. Both spouses are guilty of self-medicating; her for dosing from her husband's prescription; him for not finishing his prescription dosage as the doctor ordered.
• Self-medicating with over-the- counter drugs. Many seniors ingest any number of over-the-counter drugs to treat health problems. Their sources of knowledge are TV commercials and old wives' tales. They are risking serious health complications and may not be around for the birth of their next grandchild. Another form of self-medicating entails using drugs well past their expiration dates. And I mean well past their expiration dates, like a few years past. Squirreling away antibiotics, for example, for some future emergency is dangerous. The potency of the drug diminishes over time, and it may be the wrong drug to begin with.

Ron Smith is the author of books for seniors including Scambusters and Making Your Golden Years Golden. E-mail your questions to him at seniors_advocate@yahoo.com .