Know Your Drugs

Asking “why” can protect you from scary medication mistakes.

- Mary Anne Dunkin

Read any prescription bottle and you’ll see the name and strength of the medicine in it as well as how often and how to take it. But Gordon Schiff, MD, associate director of the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, believes one important piece of information is missing from the bottle: the condition for which it’s prescribed. Adding that single bit of information could reduce these potentially harmful medication errors.