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How to find out what your medicines or drugs will do for you What will the medicine do for me?
To understand the benefits of your medicine, you need to know what it does (its effect) and how well it works. Here are some pointers to finding out what your medicine will do for you.
Contents
What will the medicine do for me?
- How will this medicine help my illness?
- Video: Get the most out of your consumer medicine information (CMI)
- Which benefits are important to me?
- How will I know if the medicine is working and how long will that take?
- How well is the medicine likely to work?
FAQs
Story
To work out the benefits of a medicine you need to know what it does (its effect) and how well it works.
To understand how a medicine might help, you need to find out what benefits it is expected to have by talking to your health professional. The consumer medicine information (CMI) leaflet for your medicine may provide some extra information — read it and discuss it with your health professional if you have any questions about it.
A medicine or medication can work in different ways, it might:
- prevent an illness from developing
- reduce some or all of the symptoms
- stop an illness from getting worse
- cure an illness
- prevent complications developing.
Here are some questions for you to think about and discuss with your health professional:
- How will this medicine help my illness?
- Which benefits are important to me?
- How will I know the medicine is working and how long will that take?
- How well is the medicine likely to work?
How will this medicine help my illness?
Different medicines can help different aspects of your illness. For example, if you were having an asthma attack you would use a short-acting inhaled medicine (reliever) to open up your airways and quickly help your breathing. However, this won’t make future asthma attacks any milder or less frequent — you would need to take regular doses of another medicine to reduce inflammation in your airways (preventer) to do that.
To understand how a medicine might help, you need to find out what benefits it is expected to have by talking to your health professional. The consumer medicine information (CMI) leaflet for your medicine may provide some extra information — read it and discuss it with your health professional if you have any questions about it.
Video: Get the most out of your consumer medicine information (CMI)
©2011 NPS
Run time: 1:19m (11.7 MB)
Video transcript
CMI stands for consumer medicine information. This is a leaflet that comes with all prescribed medicines, and some of the medicines that you buy at the pharmacy, and it gives you information about what the medicine is for, how and when you should take it, what to do if you miss a dose and other very important information, such as possible side effects and interactions with other medicines.
CMIs have a lot of information in them and it’s not necessary to read them from beginning to end. You may just pick it up and try to find when you should be taking the dose, what time of day — or with food or without food. You may pick it up because you want to check on side effects, and the important thing to remember about these CMIs, which can be a bit daunting when you first see them, is that they’re all in exactly the same order, so that if you have several medicines you will find that the structure of the CMI is the same and you will quickly learn how to go straight to the piece of information that you are looking for.
Sometimes it is helpful to take notes when you are talking to your health professional. The Your medicinewise questions and answers sheet has space for you to write answers to questions about both the benefits and side effects of your medication.
Which benefits are important to me?
Different things are important to different people, so think about what benefits are important to you. When you talk to your health professional, explain which benefits are most important to you — or what aspects of your illness trouble you the most — and find out if the medicine can help, or if there is another reason for taking it.
Many people with high blood pressure do not notice any symptoms, and so controlling their blood pressure does not seem like an important benefit. But most people want to avoid a stroke or heart attack. Being told that taking blood pressure medicines can reduce their risk of a stroke, can help people make their decision.
How will I know if the medicine is working and how long will that take?
Some medicines, such as pain-relief medicines, should have an almost immediate effect. Others, such as antidepressants, often take 2–3 weeks to make a noticeable difference.
When you start taking a new medicine, ask your health professional:
- How quickly will the medicine start working?
- How will I know it is working?
- When should I come back to review how well it is working?
How well is the medicine likely to work?
Even when a medicine is known to work, it is usually not expected to be 100% effective for 100% of people. You might want to try to find out how much of an effect it is likely to have.
Your health professional can’t predict exactly how well a medicine will work for you. Sometimes you may need to try different medicines to find one that works for you.
Not everyone responds the same way to medicines. Antidepressants are a good example: genetic and other differences can mean what works for one person doesn’t work for another. If you don’t feel you are getting a benefit from the antidepressant after 6 weeks or so, talk to your health professional about trying another type.
As well as your health professional’s experience with other people taking the same medicine , information about how well it works usually comes from clinical trials and other research. These trials can tell you how many people in a scientific study received a benefit from treatment, and how great (or small) that benefit was.
If you want to find out more detail about clinical trials and other research, the links below provide some guidance on where to find this information and how to interpret it.
Other things to keep in mind
When starting a new medicine, you might also want to think about side effects, alternative treatment options, interactions with other medicines, costs and how the medicine has to be taken.
Related topics
I know the calendar says I’m getting older. I’m 65. But it gave me a real surprise. I mean, I eat pretty healthy foods and I love swimming and walking and playing with my grandkids. I thought I was alright health-wise but when I went to see my GP for an annual check-up the other week, she told me I had an irregular heatbeat and was at risk of a stroke!
I hadn’t felt anything really. She asked me to go for an ECG and I had to lie down and get hooked up to a machine that measured my heartbeats. It didn’t hurt at all, but my mind was racing about what could happen in the future.
I took the results back to her and she said this condition was officially called ‘atrial fibrillation’. She told me my heartbeats were irregular and because of this, blood flow from my heart could become sluggish and there was a risk of blood clots forming. That sounded pretty scary but even worse was when she told me they could break off and travel around my body or to my brain.
I asked her if we could stop this. She said warfarin was a medicine that reduces the risk of stroke, as it thins the blood and makes it less likely to form clots. She also said doing nothing was another option.
Well I definitely wanted to know more about warfarin, since doing nothing didn’t sound too good to me if there was a risk of stroke. My doctor told me it wasn’t a simple medicine to take — it was pretty complex because it had to be carefully monitored, because the dose for each person was really specific for that person.
She said it could also interact with other medicines and food, so I’d have to be careful about what else I took it with. There were also side effects that made me feel a bit wary of it — I’d bleed easily and bruise easily. And I’d have to have a blood test regularly to measure how fast my blood clots.
I really didn’t like the sound of taking a medicine like warfarin, having to watch this and watch that, and then also going for blood tests all the time. But then I just thought about having a stroke and I thought about my family, especially my grandkids. I’m just about to retire and I want to enjoy life at this stage, still stay active and all that. I just couldn’t do that to them — be at risk of stroke and not do anything.
It wasn’t too hard a decision to make about warfarin. I know everyone’s got to weigh up these kinds of decisions for themselves, but for me, I’d much rather take something as a precaution, especially if doing nothing could lead to stroke. My health’s pretty important and my family all support my decision.
This is a fictional account for educational purposes.
Date published: 2011-01-24 00:00:00
Reasonable care is taken to provide accurate information at the date of creation. This information is not intended as a substitute for medical advice from a qualified health professional. Health professionals should rely on their own expertise and enquiries. Where permitted by law, NPS disclaims all liability (including for negligence) for any loss, damage or injury resulting from reliance on or use of this information. Read our full disclaimer.
References to brands should not be taken as an endorsement by NPS.
