• Nurses: Educate Your Patients About Medications!

    Heath Ledger’s death from an acidental overdose of medications points out the need for patient education! Americans are often way too medicated. If one doctor won’t provide a prescription they seek out another. But the problem isn’t just with those seeking pain killers, sleeping pills and/or anti-anxiety medications and mixing them. As a home health nurse I have seen people with several versions of the same or similar medications such as anti-hypertensives or other cardiac drugs because they see so many different doctors and no one is overseeing the care. I’ve had many patients on Lisinopril for instance who were also prescribed Prinivil or Zestril by another physician. (These are…