“I’ll just have itchy, watery eyes!”

Let’s start with a little comic relief…

While Jeff Foxworthy makes a funny joke with some exaggerated side effects caused from medications, sadly, he isn’t far from the truth!  You only have to watch about 15 minutes of tv in order to see a commercial advertising a new medication. The commercials always present the drugs as the quick-fix, miracle pill that will make that specific health problem disappear in a snap. The drug may be effective in treating the specific health concern, but the commercials fail to paint the whole picture of the medication. They  always save the potential side effects for the very end of the commercial and list them off at a barely comprehensible speed, usually ending in “and in rare cases may cause serious injury or death.”  As Jeff Foxworthy so candidly stated, “I’ll just have itchy, watery eyes.”

With the combination of pharmaceutical advertisements and uninformed media coverage of medications, most of the American population approaches prescription medication in one of two ways. They either blindly take whatever their doctor prescribes or their neighbor lets them try because it “worked wonders” for them, or they stay as far away from all medications because they just poison the body. As nurses, we have a great opportunity to step into both camps of thinking and help our patients (and family and friends) have a more accurate understanding of medications so that they can make informed decisions about their health.

For my informal survey, I decided to ask my mom about the medicines that she takes. Thankfully, she does not take any prescription medications and is very healthy. However, she does take some OTC medicines.

-Do you know the names of the medications you take? And why you take each of them?

“Yes, I take ibuprofen for joint pain and headaches. And I recently started taking melatonin at night to help me go to sleep. I very rarely take Tylenol with ibuprofen instead of melatonin. Ibuprofen is the same the as Advil and Tylenol is acetaminophen.”

-Do you know the potential side effects of those medicines?

“Well, ibuprofen can cause stomach bleeding or something like that so I have to take it with food and not on an empty stomach. I took it on an empty stomach when I was also sick and I had bad stomach pain after. Now I always take it with food. I don’t know about any side effects of melatonin; it’s a natural supplement.”

-Do you know if any of those medications interact with each other when you take them together?

“Well, for a long time I thought that ibuprofen and tylenol could not be taken at the same time, but I looked into it a bit and it seems like it is totally fine to take them together. I don’t know about the melatonin.”

I have talked with my mom about some of the medications she takes, so I was encouraged to know that she is understanding and retaining a lot of the information. Talking with her about melatonin reminded me that most people take vitamins and natural supplements without thinking twice about potential side effects or whether or not they even need it  because they do not consider it a medicine. I didn’t know much about melatonin (as a natural supplement) either so we looked it up and made sure it was okay to take with ibuprofen and was appropriate for her to be taking on a regular basis.

I think this was a good reminder for her as well to be more aware of the medications she is taking and gave her some specific key questions to ask before taking new medicines.