Reporting side effects

Reporting side effects makes medicines safer and helps protect everyone’s health. It can prevent future harm to people taking the same medicine. It also helps to ensure safer prescribing and safer use of medicines in the future.

By reporting your side effects, you help to improve patient safety and protect public health, and also improve medicine information and education.

Although medicines are carefully tested in clinical trials, there are limits to those trials. These include:

• the number of people studied in the trial
• the people studied may not include special groups
• only some uses of the medicine are studied
• medicines may be tested for a shorter time period than it is prescribed. 

The benefits of people reporting their experience include:

• identifying reactions that only happen in some people, which may not have been picked up clinical trials
• that information from special groups is noted
• the long-term effects become clearer
• interactions with other medicines or even food get identified 
• more information about how severe and how common reactions and side effects are.

If you think your medicine has caused a side effect, talk to your doctor. They may be able to lower your dose or change the medicine. Don't suddenly stop taking your medicine unless your doctor tells you to.

It is important to let your doctor, pharmacist or nurse know about your side effects. Reporting side effects helps protect everyone's health.

You can also report side effects yourself through the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM)(external link). CARM accepts reports from everyone but they will try to involve the doctor, nurse or pharmacist to make sure they are also aware of the reaction.

CARM can be contacted through:

• online reporting(external link) 
• the CARM website(external link)
• phoning 03 479 7185
• e-mail carmnz@stonebow.otago.ac.nz.

CARM is a database of New Zealand-specific information on adverse reactions (side effects) to medicines and vaccines. CARM monitors this information to identify any issues to help with the safe use and prescribing of medicines. This may lead to changing prescribing or monitoring of medicines to ensure the safety of medicines registered in New Zealand.