We often learn about prescription drugs either through advertising or because our doctor prescribed them to us. From there, patients often get their prescriptions filled and take the pills as instructed, but they may have varying levels of concern and questions about the medication. What responsibility lies with the doctor for explaining the medication and its side effects – and what duties lie elsewhere?
Typically, a doctor should explain the side effects of a drug that you should watch out for, but acceptable medical practice might not require them to divulge all possible side effects. In some cases, there is even an argument that discussing side effects too much might actually cause additional problems. Rather, drug manufacturers often have the burden of listing side effects on the drug’s labels. Even so, there may be ways to hold doctors responsible for failing to explain important side effects or for failing to inform you of the risks of taking certain medications.
For help with a potential medical malpractice claim, call Rice Law for a free case evaluation with our Maryland medication error lawyers at (410) 694-7291.
Do Doctors Have to Explain Side Effects for Drugs Before Prescribing Them in Maryland?
When doctors perform procedures or exams on patients, they need to get their consent. This is what makes something like surgery different from assault and battery. However, we usually discuss consent for medical procedures as “informed consent,” given that medicine is often something the patient doesn’t understand, and they need a bit of an explanation before they truly have enough information to consent to the procedure.
When it comes to medication, patients should have informed consent as well, but the rules are often a bit looser as to what doctors are absolutely required to tell patients.
Informed Consent for Medication
Before a patient can truly understand what drugs they are taking and what the risks of those drugs are, they need to understand some potential side effects. For example, blood thinners can increase a patient’s risk of heavy bleeding, given that their blood is slower to clot. This can be dangerous if the patient doesn’t know about it. Similarly, some drugs have an increased risk of suicidal thoughts or liver harm, so patients may need to watch out for themselves or undergo additional testing to catch these effects.
Patients need to understand some of these most common and most serious dangers so they can make an informed decision about what they are putting in their bodies. Without this understanding of these risks, it is hard to say they truly consented.
Doctors often aim to divulge as much information as they can so their patients are fully informed about the risks and side effects of medication – often with the goal of reducing their potential liability. However, there are factors that might hold a doctor back from explaining every possible effect.
Risk of Noncompliance
Sometimes doctors have good reason to fear that if they explained every potential side effect of a drug, patients wouldn’t take them. Certain side effects – especially effects on sexual performance and any risk of death, however small – often scare patients away from medication. For this reason, doctors have to weigh their responsibility to inform the patient of risks against the risk that the patient will be in greater danger if they refuse to take the medication they prescribed them.
On the other hand, patients often distrust doctors who fail to inform them about everything, and this distrust is often what leads to even worse noncompliance or to medical malpractice lawsuits. Doctors can often increase compliance by helping patients be aware of side effects and ushering them through the rough spots.
“Nocebo Response”
Another potential issue with telling patients about side effects is that doctors might actually induce side effects. Many are familiar with the “placebo effect,” the phenomenon of receiving the good benefits of a medication when you actually took a sugar pill or “placebo” instead of the real thing. A related phenomenon called the “nocebo” or “negative placebo” effect has been studied to show that a doctor informing a patient about side effects can cause side effects even with a placebo.
In the same way that placebos can cause positive effects based on the patient’s expectation, they can also cause side effects this way. This ultimately means that the warning itself is sometimes what induces side effects, potentially encouraging doctors to avoid disclosing all side effects so as to reduce nocebo effects.
Factors in Holding Doctors Liable for Failing to Warn About Side Effects in Maryland
All in all, whether a doctor is liable for damages for failing to warn a patient comes down to weighing the good versus the bad and making a case-by-case decision. If your case were to go to court based on injuries from a lack of informed consent/warnings, our Maryland medication error lawyers would have to show that the doctor failed to uphold the standard of care by keeping information from you to the point that that caused your injury from the side effects. This often means showing the side effects would have been avoided (usually because you wouldn’t have taken the drug) if you had been given the full information. You may also be able to show that what happened was effectively non-consensual because of how much was withheld.
Because side effects so rarely cause serious harm – and because patients are, in fact, typically informed about the most common and most serious side effects – this kind of case rarely comes up. Instead, medication injury lawsuits are usually based on mistakes in prescribing the wrong medication or wrong dosage or from allergies or drug interactions the doctor or pharmacy should have caught.
Other Warnings, Drug Labeling, and Advertising
In many cases, the question of whether the doctor informed the patient of the risks is not at issue because the drug manufacturer was probably required to inform the patient instead. The FDA has strict rules about advertising and labeling drugs, requiring side effects to be listed in advertisements, on packaging, and in the inserts that come with prescription medication. These labels also warn you that you should ask your doctor or pharmacist about any concerns. All of this works to try to shift the burden of learning about side effects from doctors and drug manufacturers onto the patients taking the drugs.
Many of these warnings are important for the patient rather than the doctor, given that the risks involve other behaviors, like mixing the drug with alcohol or operating heavy machinery while taking the drug.
If there are any issues that would still fall to the doctor, they often come up when the doctor gives you medication in the hospital (i.e., you are not voluntarily taking it yourself), when you rely on their professional judgment in place of doing your own research (e.g., the doctor undertook to explain the side effects, but did so inaccurately, poorly, or in an incomplete manner), and when doctors prescribe drugs for off-label uses that are not discussed in the documentation and labeling that comes with the prescription.
Call Our Maryland Medication Injury Lawyers for Help Today
For help with your potential case, call the Maryland medication error lawyers at Rice Law at (410) 694-7291.