Your Health Series to focus on prescriptions and pharmacy labels

Betty Ulrich will focus on how to discuss medication with a doctor and how to interpret prescription and pharmacy labels at the Putnam County Public Library's Your Health Series on Tuesday, Nov. 17, from 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

Ulrich will ask the question, "How confident are you that you take prescription drugs correctly?"

The instructions on the bottle's label may not seem to be hard to follow, but more than 500,000 Americans misinterpret them every year, according to Consumer Reports. A 2006 report from the Institute of Medicine states there are about 1.5 million preventable medication errors each year.

"Health literacy is a big issue," says Allen Vaida, executive vice president of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) in Pennsylvania. "Even college grads can have trouble when it comes to understanding terms that health-care workers use."