Questions to ask at the pharmacy
healthdirect’s guide treats asking about a prescribed medicine as your right, whether you ask the pharmacist or the doctor, and groups the questions worth asking into eight areas: the benefits, the side effects, going without it, knowing it works, the alternatives, how to take it, the cost, and alcohol.
Eight questions · from healthdirect’s guide
The eight questions
Each card puts one of the eight areas from healthdirect’s guide in our own words, in the guide’s order, with a line on why it matters.
- What is this medicine meant to do for me?
Medicines work in different ways: some ease symptoms, others lower the risk of illness or complications. healthdirect suggests weighing what that benefit means to you.
- Which side effects might I notice?
healthdirect separates the more common, usually milder kind from the rarer, more serious kind. The CMI leaflet lists them too.
- What if I don’t take it?
Some illnesses settle with or without a medicine; others get worse, sometimes for good, without one. healthdirect ties this question to informed consent.
- How will I know it is working, and when?
Some medicines act almost straight away, others take weeks. healthdirect also notes that some have to be tapered off rather than stopped suddenly.
- Are there other options?
Another medicine, or a treatment that is not a medicine, may be possible; each comes with its own mix of benefit, risk and cost.
- How should I take it, and for how long?
Some are taken once a week, others several times a day; some courses are short and some are long-term.
- What will it cost me?
healthdirect points out that a medicine not on the PBS is charged at its full price.
- Is alcohol safe with it?
Alcohol interacts with many medicines, even in small amounts, and that can affect driving, work and looking after children.
What a pharmacist can help with
healthdirect’s guide calls pharmacists qualified medicines experts, whose core job is supplying medicines and helping people use them safely.
Beyond filling a prescription, the guide covers several ways a pharmacist can help with medicines: making up (compounding) a medicine for one person, pointing to generic versions, which usually cost less, saying whether a non-prescription medicine suits you, packing medicines into a blister pack sorted by day and time, carrying out a Home Medicines Review that ends in a report to your doctor, and delivering to your home. Talking to a pharmacist is often free, the guide says, though some services, the blister pack among them, can carry a fee.
Questions about the PBS and cost
The cost question has a second half. healthdirect suggests finding out whether a medicine is on the PBS, and, where cost is a worry, whether something cheaper would do. Choosing the original brand of a PBS medicine can add a brand price premium; a pharmacist can offer a generic with the same active ingredient instead. The PBS Safety Net is covered on its own page.
Questions in another language
For someone who speaks a language other than English, healthdirect notes that a pharmacist can bring in a telephone interpreter through the Free Interpreting Service, with the connection taking a few minutes.
Where to read more about a medicine
Every prescription and pharmacist-only medicine comes with a Consumer Medicine Information leaflet, healthdirect says, and a pharmacist can point it out. The dispensing label itself is explained, box by box, on reading a dispensing label. healthdirect runs a 24-hour line, 1800 022 222, where you can talk to a nurse or doctor.
A note on why the questions are worth asking
healthdirect’s reasoning is that asking helps you see your options and know what to expect from taking a medicine, stopping it, or not starting it. The guide also says the decision to take a medicine is yours even when it is prescribed, and that a health professional should be consulted before stopping one.