Assist Patients with Medication Decisions

描述（由申请人提供）： 数以百万计的患者服用处方药、非处方药和膳食补充剂。受各种因素的驱动，例如改善健康的愿望、自我药疗的便利性和相对低的成本、天然产品安全性的假设以及对医生处方治疗的不满，许多患者寻求非处方药。当自我治疗时，患者像医生一样评估症状，评估选择并做出决定。大多数患者不愿意服用已知无效或有害的药物。然而，患者并不总是了解他们服用的产品的适应症，副作用和禁忌症。事实上，最近的患者调查发现，大多数潜在的药物相互作用涉及非处方药。我们认为，这是必要的，以帮助患者作出更明智的决定，通过积极主动地为他们提供及时的，相关的，可理解的，和可操作的信息。该研究将调查患者需要什么样的疗效和安全性信息，以及如何向患者提供这些信息，开发一种自我用药决策支持工具，以警告患者可能无效或有害的使用，并建议更安全，更有效的替代方案，并评估患者对决策支持的反应。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Millions of patients take prescription drugs, over the counter (OTC) drugs, and dietary supplements. Driven by a variety of factors such as the desire to improve health, the convenience and relative low cost of self- medication, the assumption of natural products' safety, and the dissatisfaction with physician-prescribed treatments, many patients seek non-prescription drugs. When self-medicating, patients, like physicians, assess symptoms, evaluate options, and make decisions. Most patients would not willingly take medications that are known to be ineffective or harmful. Patients, however, do not always understand the indication, side effects, and contraindications of the products they take. Indeed, recent patient surveys found that the majority of potential drug-drug interactions involve non-prescription drugs. We argue that it is necessary to help patients make better-informed decisions regarding self-medication by proactively providing them with timely, relevant, comprehensible, and actionable information. The propose study will investigate what efficacy and safety information patients need and how to present that information to patients, develop a self-medication decision support tool to warn patients of potentially ineffective or harmful usage and suggest safer and more effective alternatives, and evaluate patient response to the decision support.