What is that orange pill I found?

When in doubt, it makes sense to check out the monographs, if available, in your drug guides. Print ones are not often updated as quickly as online ones, so for a recent question on my floor, we headed to the internet.

First, we checked http://www.epocrates.com/ and searched through their medication lists based on what a couple other nurses thought the mystery pill was. ePocrates will give you a picture of the pill if you know which drug you are looking for in a list. You cannot search for a drug by color or shape of the pill or capsule.

For testing purposes to see if there was a database to search by color, we used LiveSearch and found this site: http://gsm.about.com/pid/main.asp on http://www.about.com/ which allows you to plug in pill shape and color. Once complete, you will get a list (also with photos, if available, and markings) which can help you identify your pill. This helped us identify the mystery pill as a generic Xanax 1mg tab. The markings also helped us hone in on the exact pill, even if the photo was not available.

Another web site of interest we encountered today was http://www.pdrhealth.com/. It is another web site from the PDR desktop folks with information specifically directed to consumers. In particular, there is an interesting section on drug trials and recently FDA approved medications.

Alas, the old adage to check it out really is true, and the internet makes the resolutions even faster.