We all know that during this COVID-19 season we wanted to get things done efficiently. This is especially true when you are visiting hospitals, clinics or pharmacies when you wanted to shorten your visit time or just be considerate to others in a long queue to get their medications or other medical supplies too. There are a few handy ways to make sure this and also safeguarding yourself from medication error.

1. Prepare your prescription (Duh!)

This seems like a redundant point, but do you know that preparing prescriptions does not just involve bringing your prescription along? Double-check your prescription at home and make sure you are bringing the correct one. This includes the correct person and the up-to-date prescription. The prescriber might have changed the dose of your medication since the last review. Also, if you are seeing more than one doctor at the same time, make sure you bring along all the active prescriptions to check for drug interactions or duplication of medication.

2. Practice the 7Rs

7Rs (previously 5Rs) is a common practice among the healthcare providers especially among the nurses and pharmacist. The 7Rs stands for the 7 rights below:

• Right Patient
• Right Drug
• Right Dose
• Right Time
• Right Route
• Right Documentations

Knowing these will significantly shorten the time when your pharmacist is in doubt and confirm the medication with you and reduce chances of any errors. If you are collecting medication on another person’s behalf, it is always good to make sure you know all these details.

3. Know your allergies and medical history

Allergies and medical history affects largely on the choice of medication you are taking. For example, if you are allergy to an antibiotic, you might not be able to take a few other antibiotics in the same group. It is good if you can bring along your medication allergy card and show it to the pharmacist or just simply mentioned the name of the medication and the type of reactions. Certain underlying medical history will increase the side effects of some medications. Therefore it is also crucial to know your own (or the person you are collecting medication on behalf) medical history and allergies well.

4. Recognising both name and looks of your medication

When ask on the type of medication they are taking. Many people will said “the medication of diabetes”, “the white round medication”, or some might mention the brand name of the medication. Note that medication usually has both a generic name and a brand name. It is better to know your medication as the generic name as there may be loads of brands around for the same medication. Do not assume that it is a different medication just because the brand, the packaging or the looks are different. This is of course unless you have specific reasons that you can only use a certain brand of medication.

5. Be honest about your compliance

When ask if they are compliant to their own medication, some people like to lie about their compliance for fear of getting “scolded” by the medical professionals. However it is important to be honest about your compliance, so that when the medication is not working properly perhaps because you are not taking it correctly, or that you might have excess of medication at home and pharmacists could prevent oversupplying medications to you that you do not need. It is also important that pharmacist can make useful suggestions according to your lifestyle to help your compliance. This can be done by making suggestions to prescriber to change to a more suitable medication, regimen or administration time. It is not advisable to do it yourself as some medications has specific administration time for it to be effective.

These points are of course not only helpful during the Covid-19 season but at all times. Empowering yourself with the knowledge makes yourself understand more on the treatment you are getting and generally improves the treatment!