Tips to Navigate Through the OTC and Prescription Drug Jungle

Medical Author: Benjamin C. Wedro, MD, FAAEM
Medical Editor: Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD

Choice is often a wonderful thing for the consumer. But sometimes too many options can make shopping tough, and it may even be deadly as far as medications are concerned.

Walking into a supermarket or pharmacy, you are confronted with shelf upon shelf of medications advertised to cure everything from cold symptoms to warts. There are the nationally advertised brands, the stores' own label, and generic products, all packaged to confuse even the most savvy shopper. Advertisements in magazines and on television tout the latest and greatest advances in products to help treat you and your family. Need advice? Join the crowd.

Headlines are made when medication errors happen in hospitals. Dennis Quaid's twins were accidentally given an overdose of heparin, a blood-thinning drug. The Institute of Medicine reports that thousands of people die each year in hospitals because medications were given inappropriately:

• the wrong drug was given to the patient,
  
  
• the wrong dose was administered to the patient, or
  
  
• drug interactions occurred.

Imagine that these errors happened in a place where professionals - nurses, doctors and pharmacists - do this for a living. What chance does the average person have, wandering through the nonprescription aisles of the local store?

The salvation lies with the professional behind the counter.