Caution: coloured medication and the colour blind

Abstract

Colour is a good way to diff erentiate tablets and their containers because it enables more immediate recognition than do words printed on labels or embossed onto tablets. Moreover, patients with poor vision or those not wearing their reading glasses can have diffi culty reading print on labels or tiny low-contrast embossed text on tablets. However, 8% of men and 0·4% of women have impaired colour-vision, of whom half are unable to recognise the main colours used in colour coding. In a survey of 100 people with impaired colour-vision, 2% reported that they had confused their medication because they had mistaken the colour of tablets. The appearance of warfarin tablets and containers to individuals with moderate or severe red–green defi ciencies of colour vision are shown in the fi gure. The pink tablet appears blue and the green tablet appears grey. Doctors and pharmacists should only use colour to instruct patients on how to identify tablets if they know that the patient has normal colour vision. People with red–green colour defi ciency can recognise yellow, blue, grey, and white—perhaps manufacturers should incorporate this information into guidelines about the use of colour for tablet identifi cation.