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Remember when you ate too much ice cream as a kid and afterwards your tummy ached? Fast forward to your adult experience. What if the drug you are taking is too high a dosage or has side effects? A tummy ache may be the least of your worries given the other possible adverse effects.
According to experts in drug policy, many Canadians are over-medicated and at risk from the effects of pharmaceutical drugs.
Dr. James McCormack, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences at UBC, suggests that physicians inform a patient about a drug treatment’s benefits versus its risks and engage in shared, informed decision-making. Patients’ responses to medication vary widely, says McCormack, who doesn’t mince words about the marketing used for drug dosages: “If anybody thinks we know what specific dose to use on a particular person, they’re crazy.”
Dr. David Newman is an emergency room physician in New York City and author of the book, “Hippocrates Shadow: Secrets from the House of Medicine.“ He writes of a patient that came to him with a respiratory illness – bronchitis. Antibiotics are commonly prescribed for this condition, but he states they are no better than placebos. In discussing this with his patient – most patients expect this prescription – he was surprised when she cut him off, wiped her nose with a tissue and said: “I’d like to avoid antibiotics with all those side effects”.
After years of presuming more health care leads to better health, is the public consciousness moving to a leaner view?
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