Save Patients from Misusing of Their Drugs with Medication Dispensing

However, misuse or abuse of medicines is increasing in most cases, especially for prescription opioid medications. The patients are generally taking their prescribed medication as directed by their doctors. The National Survey on Drug Usage and Health states that approximately two million patients in the United States use their prescription in an abuse manner and a huge number of patients abuse stimulants, tranquillizers and sedatives.

The detection and prevention of drug abuse or misuse is an important factor for doctor and health care providers. Going for pre-packaged medication dispensing is one of the right ways to avoid misuse or abuse of medicines. Here are a few tips to avoid your patients taking this route.

Invest in your hospital's in-house drug dispensing system

Nearly every country has in place a PDMP (Prescription Drug Monitoring Programme). Pharmacists have used this tool for long to track medicines administered to patients to ensure that it is prescribed safely. The in-house medication dissemination system is set to provide the medicine reports automatically to each state database in order to ensure that the physicians are not obliged to complete the task manually and to ensure that the information is up to date. This means that when doctors monitor the PDMP in their state, the information is up-to-date and can help identify patients who are suspect of drug abuse or misuse.

The provision of pre-packaged medication dispensing is one of flawless ways to ensure accuracy. This means that the medicines are packed into ready-to-dispense sizes so the staff do not have to pill a prescription, count it and label it. Not only does this eliminate the potential for inter-office theft or pill divert, it also removes any doubt that the prescribed number of pills has or has not been received by the patient. When physicians see signs of potential abuse or misuse, they are entitled to adjust the medication consumption to a less packaged size and then monitor the patient carefully.

Additional Ways of Avoiding Drug Abuse

You can develop information materials in partnership with other healthcare providers.

Continuous education should be provided regarding the risks of taking drugs, especially after surgery or after-care. As a doctor, you can discuss the topic with your patients during follow-up visits when you have enough educational material in your clinic.

The health care provider is responsible for teaching and providing patients with good guidance. They have to help them realise that certain products are still dangerous, although helpful, and visual aids such as pamphlets and fliers may be helpful.

In your patient consultations, you can incorporate drug abuse screening.

A doctor can usually detect when visiting clinics whether a patient is likely to have an abuse or abuse by asking the correct questions in order to discuss the medical history of the patient and paying particular attention to the evidence of abuse. The Association of American Family Physicists is actually encouraging this sort of test to ask patients whether they are at risk. In fact, this type of script has provided sample questions.

Contact PD-RX Pharmaceuticals if you wish to implement pre-packaged medication dispensing in OKC.

**Disclaimer: The information on this page is not intended to be a doctor's advice, nor does it create any form of patient-doctor relationship.