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Guidelines for Safe
and Effective Drug Use

DO NOT

• pressure your doctor to prescribe drugs that, in his or her judgment, you do not need. A pill is not always the answer.
• blindly accept care from any provider. Ask your HMO or medical group how their results or outcomes compare to other groups in the area and the country.
• assume that all doctors know all the drugs you take. Always ask your doctor or pharmacist BEFORE combining any other medicine with medicines already prescribed.
• pick up a stapled prescription bag. ALWAYS open a stapled bag, check the brief patient information that may be inside the bag and make sure you understand it. While you are in the pharmacy, read the prescription label and make sure it makes sense. Look at the pills, and (especially on refill drugs) check to see that they look the same as they did before. On new prescriptions, ask that the prescription be checked to make sure it is the correct medicine.
• take prescription drugs on your own or on the advice of friends and neighbors because your symptoms are "just like theirs." Drug therapy must be individualized, based on liver and/or kidney function, medicines you currently take, and many other factors.
• offer drugs prescribed for you to anyone else without a physician's guidance.
• change the dose or timing of any drug without the advice of your physician (except when the drug appears to be causing adverse effects). leave it to a guess that you've taken your medicine. ALWAYS get a dosing calendar or make one so that you can check off each dose as you take it.
• continue to take a drug that you feel is causing problems, until you are able to talk with vour doctor.
• store your medicines in a bathroom medicine cabinet. This is often an area of high humidity which can (even though the bottle is closed) enter the medicine and degrade the active drug. Select a lockable kitchen cabinet out of reach of children.
• take any drug (prescription or nonprescription) while pregnant or nursing an infant until you talk to your doctor or pharmacist. Many herbal combinations may have active ingredients similar to those found in prescription medicines.
• take any more medicines than are absolutely necessary. (The greater the number of drugs taken at the same time, the greater the likelihood of adverse effects.)
• withhold from your doctor information about previous prescription or nonprescription drug use. He or she will want to know what has helped and what has caused problems.
• take any drug in the dark. Identify every dose of medicine carefully in adequate light to be certain you are taking the intended drug.
• keep drugs on a bedside table. Drugs for emergency use, such as nitroglycerin, are an exception. It is best to have only one such drug at the bedside for use during the night.