Since this blog has taken somewhat of an intellectual turn as of late (nougats and circumcision aside) I thought I'd put my two cents in on how to handle the dillemna that M alluded to. If only we had someone who had some kind of post post post graduate education on health outcomes to shed some more light this topic.
A patient came down the other day who was prescribed Seroquel 25mg (1/2 tab at HS) .. wow this is starting to get nerdy.... anyways he was told me the doc had told him it was for anxiety and he wanted a leaflet. I explained to him how the drug worked to the best of my knowledge then I showed him the leaflet. One of the listed side effects was ..... yes you guessed it... anxiety. This dude totally lost it, and starting twitching. His hand started shaking and he kept repeating .... "i can't take this, i already have anxiety, i can't, i can't..." he kept reading and saw some note on suicidal thinking and flipped his wig. I attempted to calm him down and explained to him that is very rare and usually will only occur with aburpt discontinuation etc etc etc.... He looks at the sheet again and tears it up infront of me and says.... ok I'll take it but I can't be reading this.
A friend of mine who is a physician doesn't believe in informed consent. Informed consent for non health care people is when a medical professional must disclose all benefits and risks to the patient before the start of any treatment (surgical or medical). He says that true informed consent is going to medical school.
The point is there is no formula. Patients will react different based on level of education previous experience with prescription drugs, family upbringing , even religion plays a factor.
So what do we as pharmacists do in the 12 -91 seconds that we may have. Is make an attempt do decipher all of this and make a judgment call and how and what to say to the patient.
Keep it reppin
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Unfortunately going to Med school (or pharmacy at that) does not give us the right to make decisions for people. Education is a powerful tool , and is just that a tool. Unfortunately education does not give you the right to force your opinion on others (unless they plan to hurt themselves or others).
ReplyDeleteI think MD raises a great question regarding how much information should we be giving, should we be going over every single side effect the medication can cause or just the major ones? I believe that this one of those things that comes down to your experience and assessment of the patient.
Interestingly enough the majority of those side effects in the package insert is neither accurate or correct...but that is another story.