• Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions
• Health Care Quality, Access, and Evaluation

In 1981, DTB highlighted the importance of providing information to patients to help them use medicines safely and effectively and published a checklist of what a patient needs to know about a medicine.1 At that time, however, the only written details patients received were on the dispensing label and additional printed information was provided for very few medicines (eg, corticosteroids and anticoagulants).2 DTB recognised the need for ‘clearly written and easily understandable package information leaflets for all preparations’ to enable patients to decide whether or not to take a medicine and argued that these leaflets should be provided to all patients.2 3 In the UK, patient information leaflets (PILs) became a legal requirement for all new medicines in 1994 and …