Do you understand the package insert? The experience of the practicing physician

Spiegel interview with Ahmadi, M.D.

Ulkige folding, miniature writing, cryptic formulations: Package inserts disturb patients - instead of informing them. It's dangerous.

The tablets are effective against, among other things, "brucellosis, ornithosis, bartonellosis, rickettsiosis, melioidosis, plague". But which patient who has been prescribed the antibiotic Doxycycline 100 for bronchitis, for example, can relate to such scary-sounding epidemics? Plague? Wasn't it already eradicated?

Many current package inserts hardly fulfill the purpose of providing patients with meaningful information. What should patient-oriented package inserts look like? Ahmadi, MD, explains his suggestions in an interview with SPIEGEL.

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