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Even though clinicians carefully attend to what and how they prescribe, patients often act counter to their clinicians’ wishes, expectations, and even knowledge. These researchers investigated medication sharing in an ethnically and geographically diverse community-based sample. They conducted personal interviews with 700 individuals (age range, 12–44) recruited in public spaces, 43% of whom were determined to have low health literacy.
Only 66% of respondents reported that they had never loaned nor borrowed a prescription medication. Seven percent loaned a prescription medicine to someone else, 11% borrowed a medication, and 16% did both. Medications most commonly shared were allergy medications (25%), pain medications (22%), antibiotics (21…