74 year old Teresa Olender struggles to keep track of all of her medications.
“One is for the heart, one is for blood pressure, one is a water pill and the other one is for cholesterol,” says Teresa. Teresa’s problem is that she has poor eyesight, making it hard for her to the read the labels on her medicines.
Teresa had cataract surgery and now even with her glasses, reading medicine labels can be a difficult task.
According to a recent study in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, information and instructions provided on medicine labels are far too small for people with impaired or partially sighted vision to read. Most information on medicines and treatment is communicated in writing, but little thought has been given as to whether patients can actually read it, say the researchers.
“Often I have to rely on my neighbor to read medicine labels for me, so that I know what I’m taking,” says Teresa.
Keith Hartman, with the National Community Pharmacists Association, says
“Drug companies are required to put so many cautions on those packages now, that the medicine labels don’t really have enough room to hold all that information. That’s why most medicine labels are hard to read, even for those who are not visually impaired, let alone those who are visually impaired.”
The study assessed the point at which 180 patients were unable to read, without magnification, the manufacturer’s printed instructions on the side of a bottle of eye-drops.
All the patients, whose average age was 70, had impaired eyesight of varying degrees in one or both eyes. This included a range of conditions, including glaucoma, macular degeneration and cataracts.
Keith has made it a practice in his pharmacy to verbally review prescriptions with customers. In addition he has made magnifying glasses available so that they can read medicine labels.
He encourages all people to develop a relationship with their pharmacists as a means of combating any miscommunication about their prescriptions.
“Develop that relationship with a pharmacist and have that relationship that you can go back to that person and feel comfortable calling on them and relying on them for that information that you need so when you get home if you do forget something you’re not ashamed or embarrassed to call back,” says Hartman.
As for Teresa, she says she’d like to see pharmaceutical companies step up to the plate and invest in creating larger printed materials for the visually impaired. “If the fonts were made bigger, and I wouldn’t have to rely on my glasses to see what I’m doing, I would feel much safer about the medicines I’m taking.”
According to the researchers, patients in the study found an enlarged font size of Arial 22 comfortable, which is approximately three times the size of font normally used on medicine labels.