Over-the-counter medicines: perils and pitfalls

Over the past 15 years UK health policy has placed greater emphasis on patient empowerment and encouraging people to exercise self-care. This has been facilitated by the deregulation of medicines from prescription-only status to non-prescription use, which has swollen the number of medicines available for consumer purchase and allowed a larger number of conditions to be self-managed. This article explores this process of medicine deregulation, how this process affects their sale and supply and the effectiveness of non-prescription medicine.