Know your prescription medications

When emergencies come up while you are traveling, you can not always check with your pharmacy or doctor to make sure that a new medication you might get from a doctor in another state will not have potential side effects with something you or your care recipient are currently taking. That is why I love sites such as Epocrates Online, that offer free online access to information on possible drug interactions and side effects.

In my own life at the moment, my dad was just prescribed a medicine by his doctor that she had hoped would help alleviate the pain he felt in his left arm and leg, however, upon getting a chance to investigate the medication closer, I discovered it has a reaction with the pain medication that makes it less effective, and has potential side effects of, among other things, suicidality. I don't really want my dad to be having suicidal thoughts just to test a medication to see if it makes his leg not hurt, particularly not when the pain medication he is taking is doing just fine in controlling the pain.

Another example from my life is my parents efforts to stop smoking. My dad has gone the route of cold turkey, having tried patches with some success in the past (and he went right back to smoking a few months later), this time he's really trying and my mom is too - although she is considering if pills or patches might be an alternative. As their caregiver I looked into pills such as Chantix using Epocrates Online and discovered that Chantix is another one of the medications that has a possible side effect of suicidality. What is it with all the medications that have suicidality as a possible side effect? I decided my mom would be better off smoking than taking pills like that.

And that is what I like about Epocrates Online, and why I have written this post, it makes it so easy for family caregivers to take just a few moments to double check new prescriptions from anywhere they can get online. Drug interactions are dangerous, and it is important for family caregivers, and anyone else, to be able to keep up on what possible interactions and side effects new prescriptions have.

Don't leave something this important up to doctors and pharmacists, just a few minutes can possibly make all the difference.

This announcement was paid for by Epocrates.