ASA without "SAIDS"?

Nurses Safety

Published

Specializes in med/surg.

So, I was sitting at the pharmacy yesterday waiting for my scrip to be filled, and a lady came up to ask a question.

Lady: "My husband is supposed to take a baby aspirin every day, but all the ones I have found have saids in them. Do you have any without saids, because they say saids are bad for you."

So I overhear this, and although I let the pharmacist field the answer to that one, my thoughts went from holy cow, and these are the people voting and reproducing to wow, we are really doing a crappy job educating these people if we can't get across that aspirin belongs to a class of drugs called NSAIDS and you can't have NSAID-free aspirin like you can have fat free pretzels. Then again, look at the media we are up against. I had a lengthy discussion with my mother in law recently because she was taking way too much ibuprofen because she heard that tylenol was bad for her. Patient education is so important, but does anyone else feel like it's really an insurmountable task to get patients to trust and listen to their nurses and docs more than they trust and listen to commercials for law firms?

It took the pharmacist a second to figure out what the was actually talking about, (saids? oh, you mean N-S-A-I-D-S)

and I'm not sure he did the best job explaining the issue to her (aspirin is an NSAID, you can't buy them without. The bad effects they are talking about is when NSAIDS like ibuprofen and Aleve are taken in large doses over long periods of time).

Pretty sure the lady is going to go home without the NSAID-filled ASA (but I really need them without, my husband is so particular about what's in his medicine). Sigh.

Specializes in Emergency/Trauma/Critical Care Nursing.

Unfortunately even with repeated teaching some people will never learn. Prime example is my mother, she will refuse to take a Motrin 800mg because she swears it "puts her to sleep", however she has no problem taking 3 or 4 OTC Motrin which = 600-800mg. Doesn't matter how many times I tell her Motrin 800 has no sedative properties, she swears it does. She is also an antibiotic hoarder and if she hears me so much as sniffle, she'll offer me some of her leftover Amoxicillin that is god knows how old, lol. Can't tell her to stop that either because she's right and I'm wrong lol. Its frustrating but ya gotta love her anyways!

Specializes in Pediatrics, Emergency, Trauma.

Unfortunately, these people keep us in business...

Specializes in OB-Gyn/Primary Care/Ambulatory Leadership.

I work in an OB/Gyn clinic, and once in a while we will get a young woman who wants her Mirena IUD removed because she "heard on TV it was dangerous". Unfortunately, what she doesn't realize is pregnancy/childbirth is FAR more dangerous than any risks of the IUD, and we usually see these women back in our clinic 6 months later for prenatal care.

Specializes in ICU.

My mother was the same way. If it was an "old wife's tale" she would believe it in a heartbeat. If it was told to her 50 years ago, she would still believe it. But if I tried to tell her anything, I was wrong, wrong, wrong!

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