Be careful with medicines, doctor warns

Doctors should be very careful when they treat patients, Sri Jayawardenapura University Medical Faculty Prof. Chandanie Wanigatunge said.

She was speaking at the AGM of the National Council for the Deaf (NCD) held in Colombo. NCD President W. Ratnayake, Senior Director Maud Senaratne and Shirani Dissanayake were present. Prof. Wanigatunge lauded the invaluable service that NCD provides for children with hearing difficulties and said doctors should be careful when prescribing medicines to people with hearing problems since they can purchase wrong medicines.

“The medicines help persons to live healthy lives. But every medicine has side effects,” she said. “If patients take in wrong medicines, they will suffer from various illnesses,” she said.

She said medicines can harm even when they are taken correctly as prescribed by the doctor.

The Prof. said a safe medicine is not available now and therefore, people should know the best way to use medicines to minimise harms they do.

“We take medicines for a short period for infections and a long period to control health issues such as high blood pressure and high glucose level in the blood,” she said.

“When taking medicine we need to take right medicine and right dose in right duration,” she said.

“If patients do not take medicines properly, treatment process will not work and it could even harm patients,” she said.

She advised patients to take all their medical records when they go to consult a doctor as it will help the doctor to give them the right medicines. Prof. Wanigatunge asked patients to refrain from over-the-counter purchasing as doctors change medicines or doses in accordance with the latest situation of a patient.

She said that if prescriptions of a patient are not changed when his or her condition changes, the doctor may not be giving the correct medicines and the patient will not get the expected result. Errors can occur in transcribing, dispensing and administration, she said.

“Patients/caregivers play a vital role in administering medicines correctly. When they stop taking or giving medicine abruptly, when they do not know about the disease they are treating and when they neglect instructions, they may cause fatal errors, she said.

Damaged medical records, incomplete records or unavailability of records may lead the prescriber to make errors, she said.