Prevent Accidental Medication Overdoses in Kids — Keep Your Medicines up and Away
As a parent or caregiver, you may wish you could be everywhere at once — but we all know that’s impossible. When kids get into something they’re not supposed to, like medicines, vitamins, or supplements, there’s a good chance you’ll be in another room or distracted and unable to stop them. That’s why it’s so important to keep medicines out of the sight and reach of young children — and to put medicines away right after you use them, every time.
Protect your child. Here’s how:
✔Put medicines and vitamins up and away – out of reach and out of sight
Children are curious and put all sorts of things in their mouths. Even if you turn your back for less than a minute, they can quickly get into things that could hurt them.
Pick a storage place in your home that your child cannot reach or see. Different families will have different places. Walk around your house and decide on the safest place to keep your medicines and vitamins.
✔Put medicines and vitamins away every time
This includes medicines and vitamins you use every day. Never leave them out on a kitchen counter or at a sick child’s bedside, even if you have to give the medicine again in a few hours.
✔Hear the click to make sure the safety cap is locked
Always relock the cap on a medicine bottle. If the bottle has a locking cap that turns, twist it until you hear the click. Remember, even though many medicines have safety caps, children may be able to open them. Every medicine and vitamin must be stored up and away and out of children’s reach and sight.
✔Teach your children about medicine safety
Teach your children what medicine is and why you must be the one to give it to them. Never tell children medicine is candy to get them to take it, even if your child doesn’t like to take his or her medicine.
✔Tell your guests about medicine safety
Ask houseguests and visitors to keep purses, bags, or coats that have medicine in them up and away and out of sight when they are in your home.
✔Be prepared in case of an emergency
Call your poison control center at 800.222.1222 right away if you think your child might have gotten into a medicine or vitamin.
Program the Poison Control number into your home and cell phones so you will have it when you need it.
For more ways to learn how to keep medicines somewhere safe visit: UpAndAway.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.
