Medication label improvement: An issue at the intersection of health literacy and patient safety

Abstract

Medication errors are the most common form of mistakes that lead to patient injury, hospitalisation and death. A large proportion of outpatient medication errors occur as a result of patients not administering a medicine as intended. Poor patient understanding of unclear and inconsistent medication labelling is a likely root cause of error. Improving the readability and understanding of instructions and supplementary information for prescription drugs is necessary to stimulate appropriate and safe medication use among patients. Standardised, evidence-based medication labelling is needed. Health literacy and language concordance should be considered in designing an enhanced medication label. Efforts must be taken to improve medication labelling as an important step towards ensuring equity in patient access to clear, concise and consistent prescription medication information.

Keywords:

• HEALTH LITERACY
• MEDICATION
• PATIENT SAFETY
• LANGUAGE