Help Your Kids Stay Safe This Summer — Keep All Medicines Up and Away
Published June 21, 2023 (revised June 24, 2024)
Kids can get sick if they swallow medicines, vitamins, or other supplements they’re not supposed to – including those that come in gummy form. Help your kids stay healthy this summer by keeping your medicines in a safe place — whether you’re at home or on the go.
Consider these tips to store medicines safely:
With hectic summer schedules, it’s easy to forget about everyday tasks. Don’t forget to put medicines, vitamins, and other supplements away right after you give or take them, every time.
Keep medicines in a place kids can’t see or reach — like in a high cabinet or on a high closet shelf.
Planning a family vacation? Be sure to pack your medicines in child-resistant containers. If you’re staying in a hotel, you can put medicines in the hotel room safe or on a high shelf in the closet.
Be sure to keep your vitamins and other supplements —including those in gummy form —up and away and out of sight and reach too!
If you think your child may have swallowed a medicine, vitamin, or other supplement, get help right away — even if you’re not sure. Call Poison Help at 800-222-1222 or go to PoisonHelp.org.
More Safety Articles
One drug pair name that often results in confusion
Our organization, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), often receives medication error reports that result from confusion with drug names that look or sound alike. One look-alike and sound-alike pair that often results in confusion is hydrALAZINE and hydrOXYzine.
With birth control pills (e.g., Tri-Estarylla, Tri-Linyah), confusion is possible between the week 1 tablets that contain norgestimate and ethinyl estradiol and the week 4 tablets that do not contain any medicine. Different brands of these birth control pills have the same medicine and dose in the active tablets, but the tablet colors vary (Table 1).
An Inquisitive Patient Is a Safe Patient...Be Persistent
If you are hospitalized, nurses will typically give you the medicine your doctor has prescribed. But if the medicine the nurse brings to you doesn’t seem right, it might be that an error has happened. You may be hesitant to speak up about the potential problem. You may believe your doctor and nurse know more about medicine than you do. But in some cases, your instincts may be right, as in the example that follows.