5 Important Questions to Ask About Medications

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When you choose a cell phone, you ask questions: “is there coverage outside the city?” Same thing when buying a car: “what are the safety features?”. But do you ever ask questions about your healthcare? About taking medications safely?

Medication mix-ups can and do happen.

Asking questions is a powerful action that every member of the public can take to improve medication safety. To help improve medication safety, here are five questions we suggest, as part of our public patient safety presentations, based on our S.A.F.E. Toolkit.

Ask your pharmacist and other members of your healthcare team about your medications. Five important questions are:

• What has changed about your prescription and why?
• What medication do I need to continue taking? Why?
• What is the correct way to take the medication? How long?
• How do I know that the medication is working? What are the side-effects?
• What follow-up do I need?

Ask these questions every time a new medication is prescribed or given, and when over the counter medications are purchased. Ask questions in the hospital, at the pharmacy, and during healthcare appointments. Use our 5 Questions to Ask About Your Medications  - Patient Notes to write down the answers to the important 5 questions.

For more information, tune in on October 23rd for the full presentation, you can register to watch at mips.ca.

Learn to be safe!