Category: Prescribing

Indication prescribing

I’ve discovered a way of doing things that improves patients understanding of their medication, and it is so simple I can’t believe I didn’t always do it before.

Actually, I lie. I was already doing it sometimes, I just hadn’t named what I did, or thought about it.

When I prescribe paracetamol, it has been fairly normal for me to write ‘take two tablets four times a day for pain’. It is the same for most of the PRN medications I prescribe. However, for all routine medications, the directions say how, but not why to take the medication.

I changed that in 2019. When I review medications, I add the indication to the prescription. The whole practice including our attached pharmacist will start using this as the new standard. For Amlodipine, for example, the directions say ‘take one in the morning to lower blood pressure’. How simple it is to do that. We can program the new directions in as short-cuts too. We’ve not been completely reliable, but it is becoming a normal way of working.

Hopefully, this small step has added a smidge more information to patient-centred discussions and decisions about medication. Maybe a bit naive, some people will always take the four white tablets in the morning without question. Some other people will play a random game, like the woman who just put all her medication in a bowl like mint imperials, and took some every day.

Now, patients will have an easy opportunity to recall why they take their medication, as well has what that medication is. More information, better discussions, more patient-centred, realistic decisions.

Indication prescribing

I have come across something so simple, so easy to do, and so intuitive, that I can’t believe that I haven’t always done it. It helps patients understand their medication, and enables better conversations about concordance between patient and prescriber.

It is indication prescribing. I have always done this for PRN medications, without even thinking. For example, if I prescribe paracetamol, the prescription says ‘take two tablets four times a day for pain’.

Now, when I add a repeat prescription, I am adding ‘take one daily to treat high blood pressure’ or ‘take one tablet before meals to ease symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome’. So far, it has had good feed-back, it costs nothing, and it moves the responsibility for compliance, concordance, for treatment towards a more patient-centred model.

There will always be the patients who state that they only take four white tablets at breakfast, or one of my more memorable old ladies who used to keep her many medications in a bowl like pan-drops and helped herself to a few each day.

I hope, by making Indication Prescribing the norm in our practice, that these patients will become the outliers. For each medication review by prescribers and the practice pharmacist, an opportunity to make this become the way things are done around here.