Communicating Drug Benefits and Risks Effectively: There Must Be a Better Way

The information that patients receive about the drugs we prescribe for them is in a sorry state. Patients are barraged by direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising in virtually every medium except cell phone ring-tones. In a health care system that rewards quantity over quality, rushed clinical encounters with physicians and pharmacists leave too little time to review drug risks and benefits, not to mention cost. Yet, public sector oversight of medication information has waned along with other federal regulatory activities, with similar unfortunate results. Occurring on the heels of several high-profile drug risk debacles, this problematic mix of overpromotion, undercommunication, and inadequate regulation has left many patients bewildered and mistrustful of the prescriptions we write, contributing to an unhealthy pattern of medication overuse, misuse, and underuse (1).

In this issue, Schwartz and colleagues (2) focus on an especially turbid area of medication information: the user-hostile welter of tiny print found in DTC drug advertisements. Federal law requires manufacturers to include this information along with the more compelling and seductive headlines and photos that promote a drug's benefits. In their current form, these barely legible sections are virtual museums of poor communication: The print is tiny; the prose is usually dull, stiff, and hard to understand; and vital facts are buried in a sea of less relevant data. All in all, these sections seem designed more to satisfy governmental requirements and ward off liability lawyers than to teach patients about the pros and cons of choosing a particular medicine. The format of the information can mask important side effects, as well as—ironically—numb the reader with so many worries that a perfectly worthy treatment may seem too toxic to take. Schwartz and colleagues, who know about far …