Leading Australian clinicians have called for urgent action to highlight the active ingredients on medicines on packaging in order to improve safety and reduce confusion by both patients and prescribers.
Professor Shane Carney, a nephrologist at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, and colleagues said that 40% of patients older than 70 took more than five medicines and were especially vulnerable to medication errors.
“Increasing brand substitution due to the proliferation of generic medicines adds to the potential for consumer and practitioner confusion and the likelihood of medication misadventure,” they said.
A recent study evaluating three major classes of PBS medicines found that about 20% of patients switched brands at least twice during 12 months, increasing the risk of confusion over what medications they...
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