How many patients actually read their drug labels?

Every day, your patients leave your office with prescriptions in hand, and many of them won't follow the instructions on the label. Not out of defiance, but because they don't fully understand what they're reading, or they're making judgment calls you never knew about.

A national survey of 600 U.S. adults conducted by Drugwatch reveals just how wide the gap is between what patients say they do with medication labels and what they actually do. Nearly half have taken a medication more frequently than directed. Nearly half have stopped a prescription early. And six in 10 have avoided starting a prescribed medication altogether because of side effect concerns without ever calling the office.

Perhaps most striking: only about one in three Americans has ever heard of an FDA black box warning. The most serious safety alert in our regulatory system is largely invisible to the people it's meant to protect.

Here are the key findings: