[WikiEN-l] How's our coverage of medications?

[Nathan]

We have a megaphone at our disposal, the question is how to use it
effectively. Warnings are pointless - we put all sorts of warnings on the
medications we dispense, but I attend probably two to three lectures a year
on how ineffective these warnings are. People don't read them - we're lucky
if they read and understand the directions. Some states require spoken
counseling on instructions and side effects because so few people read
warnings and other information when they receive medication. Warnings on
Wikipedia drug articles are unlikely to be all that effective, and if you
start putting specific disclaimers on these you will need to start doing it
on hundreds of other categories of articles as well.

We do have the {{drugbox}} infobox template, it contains all sorts of handy
links. But it is very clearly directed at medical professionals - most
people won't have a clue what the various bits of information mean, or what
to look for when following the links. I think it would make sense to
redesign the template to be more accessible to the regular reader (including
such information as a link to a gallery of dosage form images, common side
effects with percentages, class in lay terms [i.e. antidepressant instead of
SSRI], maximum safe dosage for a child and an adult, pregnancy category
[again, in lay terms instead of the letter], etc.).

I'm not sure that keeping the dosage information has much beneficial impact
- on the one hand you discourage self-medicating, but on the other you don't
tell people what the maximum dosage is, and that information might be
crucial if they are in fact self-medicating.

Nathan

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