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According to some experts, medication errors cause more deaths per year than car crashes, breast cancer or AIDS. The medical, nursing and pharmacy professions as well as your local hospital are all working very hard to minimize medication errors, but you need to do your part as well.

A recent article on this subject ends with the following advice, “Patients should understand their medications, maintain their own medication records, and take responsibility for monitoring them. Patients need to tell their providers how new medications have affected them, and the physicians need to listen.”

You should keep an up to date list of all of your medications, the dosages taken and the condition they are being used to treat. You should also know the most common and most serious side-effects of each medication. You can get this information from your doctor or pharmacist. Finally, when any new medications are being prescribed, whether by a specialist, an emergency doctor or a physician caring for you in the hospital, you need to ask what they are for and if they could interact with any of the medications you are already taking.

You can trust others to do this for you and hope they don’t make any mistakes, or you can take responsibility and make certain they don’t.

GotSafety.ORG is devoted to keeping people safe and out of the Emergency Department (ED). The tips contained in the Monthly Newsletters and Safety Books have been collected from the medical literature, from general health literature and from the stories of thousands of patients I have cared for in the ED.

You can support GotSafety.ORG by spreading the word through a free subscription to our Monthly Newsletter or by purchasing Safety Books for yourself or friends (They make great gifts). In addition, please consider making a $20 donation. Each donation pays for ten copies of the pocket version of Think Twice: More Lessons from the ER as gifts for ten ED patients.

Sincerely,
Brady Pregerson, MD

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Recommendations include the following:

• Maintain a healthy body weight. Being overweight is linked to at least six types of cancer.
• Exercise 30 to 60 minutes a day.
• Eat no more than 18 oz. of red meat per week,
• Avoid processed meat.
• Limit alcohol to one drink a day for women and two a day for men.
• Consume less than 6 g of sodium daily.
• There is no good data that dietary supplements prevent cancer.

For the complete report on pdf, click the link below
American Institute for Cancer Research report(Free PDF)p>

There are many ways to prevent falls. Here are a few.

Prevent slips by immediately cleaning up any spilled liquids from the floor, and by being extra careful whenever it is wet outside.
Prevent trips by installing proper lighting, using caution when you must walk in the dark, keeping floors clean and removing throw rugs that tend to catch your feet.

Prevent fainting spells by getting up slowly from bed, especially if you have been sleeping or have been ill or injured in any way. When you wake, stretch out for about a minute, then sit up leaning slightly backwards for 30 seconds before standing.  Don’t stand up if you feel light-headed, wait.

Be cautious when standing at or after using the toilet, especially in the morning. People often have a drop in blood pressure after using the toilet.  It may be safer to do your business in the seated position (men).  Don’t get up if you feel light headed.

Some gym machines and excercises may not be as safe as others!

For gym excercises to avoid, click here.

Drug companies are in the business of selling their products. Don’t trust everything in their ads or their claims that “Four out of five doctors recommend…” Non-prescription cough medicines have questionable efficacy and are unproven in children, where their side effects can be more severe and risk of inadvertent overdose is higher. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, since 1985 none of the 6 well-done studies of over-the-counter cold medicines have shown any meaningful benefit, and 123 deaths have been identified related to the use of these products.  Many products were recently banned by the FDA for children younger than six. For a list of these products, click here.

Current recommendation are to avoid these medications in children under the age of 6. It’s safer and cheaper to stick to Tylenol for fever, honey for cough (avoid honey in children under 1 year as there is a risk of botulism), and chicken soup to feel better in the time it takes to get better.

If you do use medications, be sure to first discuss with your child’s doctor and to make sure you know how to give the proper amount and aren’t using multiple products with duplicate ingredients.

Also, don’t forget to wash your and your children’s hands often and teach everyone in the family to cough and sneeze either down their shirts or into the crook of their elbow. For a fun and education video on the hygenic way to cough and sneeze click here.

Burnt foods, especially meats, may cause an increased risk of cancer. Higher peak temperatures may even increase risks in foods that don’t burn. To minimize risk avoid burning or charring foods, cook for longer times at lower heat and cut foods into smaller pieces prior to cooking. Continue to avoid heating foots in plastic containers, even if they are “microwave safe” as this may produce dioxanes, potential carcinogens, that can leach into the food.

IN THE NEWS:
A Dutch study finds that foods containing acrylamides, chemicals produced when foods are fried, grilled or roasted, may significantly increase the risk of developing cancer, especially in women. Those women who ate 40 micrograms of acrylamide a day, or the approximate equivalent of half a package of cookies or a single serving of French fries or potato chips, were twice as likely to get ovarian or womb cancer. Researchers say more study is needed to confirm the potential link, however.

Think Twice before insisting on that CAT-scan or MRI. Medical tests such as CT-scans, X-rays and MRI’s are important tools used by physicians to diagnose a variety of medical conditions. However, like everything, they do have risks. Sometimes things are discovered on these tests that “might” be abnormal, leading to further tests or treatments, each of which have their own risks, and in the end everything would have been better off left alone. Some tests expose the patient to high doses of radiation or to dyes that occasionally cause kidney damage or allergic reactions. In the U.S. we spend a lot more on health care than other countries, but are no healthier. So the next time your doctor advises you against a certain test, if you trust him or her, listen. Often there is a safer approach. Sometimes less is more.

The holidays are coming sooner than you think. If your business gives gifts to customers or if you just need to stock up on some stocking stuffers, please consider THINK TWICE: MORE LESSONS FROM THE ER. It’s the perfect gift and it helps keep your customers safe, so they can stay your customers.