This Consumer Update is brought to you by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
So what can Safe Use do about this? Well, one of the things we can do is create opportunities
for discussion between the patient and the doctor. At some point, there's got to be that
point where the doctor looks at the patient and says, Look I'm going to give you this
drug. I'm going to prescribe this for you but you have to understand what the issues
are with this drug. And if you have problems, you have got to call me.
And those same conversations can go on with the pharmacist also. The patient can come
up and they can talk to their pharmacist. The pharmacist is a wealth of information.
We also want to provide tools that the doctor can use to create these frank conversations,
and that the patient can use to understand the benefits, the risks, and limits of their
treatment. So can we give them information? Can they get it on a website? Can they get
it on a sheet that the doctor can hand them? This is especially important for things like
opioid drugs where the abuse potential is there, the dependence potential is there,
and the potential for others to steal or misuse their drugs is there.
In addition, you can contact FDA. And you can contact us at the Division of Drug Information.
And the Division of Drug Information handles all sorts of questions.
