Always discuss any side effects with your health professional. If there are side effects that you can’t cope with, there may be things your health professional can do to combat them, such as reduce the dose of your medicine, or switch to another treatment.
- If you have concerns about your medicines arising from an overdose or suspected poisoning, call the Poisons Information Centre, 24 hours a day on 13 11 26.
- For general emergencies call 000.
- If the side effect is not an emergency, there are a number of ways you can report it to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
Advise your health professional
Your health professional may report new or unusual medicine-related side effects they observe or that are reported to them by their patients to the TGA. Your personal information will remain confidential and your privacy will be maintained.
Call the Adverse Medicines Events (AME) Line on 1300 134 237
The AME Line is a service that encourages members of the public to report and discuss side effects that might be related to their medicine. Medicine-related side effects are reported to the TGA for assessment and contribute to national medicine safety efforts. Your personal information will remain confidential and your privacy will be maintained.
The AME Line is available Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm AEST. It is not for emergencies.
Report side effects directly to the TGA
You can report suspected side effects directly to the TGA via their website.
Each report that the TGA receives is collected in a publicly accessible national database, the Database of Adverse Event Notifications (DAEN). This database includes adverse event reports about prescription medicines, over-the-counter medicines and complementary medicines (vitamins, minerals, herbal or natural medicines). ‘Adverse events’ includes both side effects and other problems that may occur while using a medicine which turn out not to be a medicine-related side effect.
The information is regularly analysed so that any potential safety concerns can be investigated in detail. If the TGA identifies a new safety concern such as a new side effect, it can take action to address it and make sure that health professionals and the public are aware of it.