Do patients read medication guides?

Mentioned in this episode



NaPodPoMo http://napodpomo.org



Pronounce Drug Names Like a Pro Online Course https://www.kimnewlove.com



hydrocodone/apap 5/325 med guide, Click on “Medication Guide” for the written pronunciation.



Pronunciation guide



Highlights from the Episode



I’m publishing one podcast episode per day in the month of November 2020 as part of a challenge called NaPodPoMo. It stands for National Podcast Post Month. November is National Podcast Post Month, and the goal of the challenge is 30 podcast episodes in 30 days. This is a bite-sized episode, which I’m using to help promote my online course: Pronounce Drug Names Like a Pro.



The topic in this episode is medication guides. Do patients read medication guides? This is a timely topic. My younger son had all four of his wisdom teeth extracted by an oral surgeon on Monday. Unfortunately, now he has mouth pain and swelling.



3 medications were prescribed. Once we got home, I sat down and read my son’s discharge instructions and everything that came with his prescriptions. There was a lot to read. I read one, short pamphlet from the oral surgeon and five pages of information from the pharmacy. (There were five pages of information for 3 medications.) I looked everything over, and to my surprise, I found written pronunciations for all three drugs! If you haven’t noticed these before, they look like drug names spelled phonetically.



Can patients interpret the written pronunciations? I can read them because I know how to interpret the symbols, capitalized syllables, long and short vowel sounds, and other pronunciation rules that go along with a written pronunciations. Unfortunately, there is not a pronunciation guide in any of the medication guides I received. How is anyone learning these drug names for the first time supposed to get it right? Even if there were a pronunciation guide in the medication guide, would anyone read it? That takes me back to my original question. Do patients read medication guides? If they do, the learning curve seems pretty steep to learn drug name pronunciations from medication guides.

drugnamesmedicationguidespronunciation