Prescription medications are often the fastest and most convenient solution to modern medical issues. Physicians can prescribe drugs that help lower your cholesterol, reduce your likelihood of a blood clot and even balance out your moods. With all of those potential medical benefits associated with prescription medication comes a not insubstantial degree of risk.
Your physician should advise you of those risks when they prescribed the medication and then also monitor you after you start taking a new medication for potential negative effects or consequences. Inadequate monitoring can lead to medication injuries and then medical malpractice claims.
It’s hard to predict how people will react to a drug
There are so many modern medications available that physicians cannot reasonably memorize each and every drug, its medical effects and its possible side effects. Even if that were possible, there are always a small number of people who respond differently to a drug than others do.
Whether due to genetics, dietary habits and other factors, medications behave differently in different people. If your physician doesn’t carefully monitor you after a new prescription, they will have no way of helping you identify early signs of a negative reaction to the drug.
Careful monitoring can also catch administration mistakes
If you have never taken a given medication before, you may not recognize it and will have no way of knowing if the nurse at the hospital or the pharmacist at the store gives you the wrong pill. Your physician could potentially recognize the signs of either not receiving the right medication or taking a different medication if they follow up with you shortly after you begin the new prescription.
Instead of leaving patients to their own devices for weeks or even months after they start a new drug, it is incumbent upon medical professionals to verify how someone responds to medication in order to protect their patients and their medical practices.
