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

[David Gerard]

2008/11/25 Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com>:

> 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.


I think the very best thing we can do in terms of serving the public
is to have as clear, accurate and referenced information as we can, in
a well-written article, i.e. what we do anyway.


- d.