Forty-four percent of baby boomer women research prescribed drugs using multiple sources before filling a prescription, a survey found.
A subset of boomer women, called “Ka-boomers,” are less trusting of medical authority, deeply skeptical of direct-to-consumer advertising, and inclined to research the drugs they’re prescribed, weighing benefits against cost and, in particular, potential side effects, according a survey by GSW Worldwide’s Pink Tank unit, which focuses on women’s health.
Ka-boomers, the survey found, rely on “composite decision making,” consulting multiple sources and talking to close-knit networks of friends online and off.
Thirty-two percent said they research drugs online before filling, while 10 percent consider the cost, and 2 percent ask friends or family, Medical Marketing Media reports in the article “Script in Hand, Boomer Women Sleep on It, Ask Friends Before Filling.”
That’s good news.
Hundreds of millions of prescriptions are wrong, either entirely unnecessary or unnecessarily dangerous, reports Public Citizen in the article “Misprescribing and Overprescribing of Drugs.”
Inappropriate prescribing occurs when the risks of a prescription outweigh the benefits.
Misprescribing wastes tens of billions of dollars and has serious consequences. More than 1.5 million people are hospitalized, and more than 100,000 die each year from largely preventable adverse reactions to drugs that shouldn’t have been prescribed, reports Public Citizen.
Overprescribing occurs when an adverse drug reaction is misinterpreted as a new medical condition. Another drug is then prescribed. Overprescribing also occurs when antibiotics are prescribed for viral conditions that don’t respond to these drugs.
The primary culprit in promoting the misprescribing and overprescribing of drugs is the pharmaceutical industry, which now sells about $216 billion worth of drugs in the United States alone, according to Public Citizen.
For information on taking prescription drugs safely, see Public Citizens’ article “Protecting Yourself and Your Family From Preventable Drug-Induced Injury.”
This is important because, although many boomer women do research on the drugs doctors recommend, as baby boomer are aging in to the higher health care consumption years, they’re consuming more prescriptions than people their age were 10 years ago.
Thanks to The Boomer Blog for posting a link to the article on boomer women and prescription drugs.
