“Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood”
-Lionel Tilling
A common misunderstanding among some patients in emergency is that of allergies versus side effects with any given medication. Many patients I encounter will swear on a stack of bibles that they are allergic to a medication when what they’re talking about is usually a known if not common side effect of said medication.
An easy is example is Demerol. Patient after patient will swear they are allergic to Demerol because it makes them nauseated or because they vomited.
Newsflash folks!
Demerol can make people nauseated. It’s a known side effect of the drug and not an allergic reaction. In fact to be specific allergic reactions are immune responses involving fairly specific types of symptoms in which nausea is not generally one of them.
But try and tell that to a patient and watch what happens. Within my experience the patient response is more often than none one of being indignant to the point of being irate followed almost as quickly by what appears to be a spirited attempt to defend themselves or their doctor against what they seem to feel is a baseless attack against them.
Now some might suggest that attempting to correct a patient in this regard is splitting hairs and thus pointless. Personally I would call it patient education with a mind to the patients benefit by not allowing them to inadvertently eliminate a potentially beneficial drug or for that matter class of drugs for the wrong reasons. But hey, what do I know!
For me being yelled at so many times of late in this regard I have to acknowledge the possibility that my potential critics are at least half right in that it is probably pointless to even try to educate patients to the difference.Sadly I am forced to conclude that for whatever reason some patients just don’t seem to want to know the difference between a know side effect and an allergy. Perhaps it’s because they think it makes them more medically interesting if they have an allergy, perhaps they’re just stupid and as I mentioned earlier just don’t care.
In the end no matter what the reason turns out to be I do have to wonder what is the limit of my responsibility in this regard actually is.
You tell me….
