Mental health clinicians don’t need to memorize drug-drug interactions; we need to decide where and how we will look them up when the need arises. For example, I got a message this morning from one of the patients in my outpatient private practice saying that she was very sick with COVID and her primary care physician may prescribe Paxlovid™. She asked me: Does Paxlovid conflict with any of my medications?
How to look up drug interactions with nirmatrelvir+ritonavir (Paxlovid™)
I confirmed that I had the full, up-to-date list of all her prescription medications—psychiatric and non-psychiatric—as well as the over-the-counter products she was taking. I told her that I would run this list through a tool that is specific for COVID-19 medications and get back to her.
Principle: I am definitely not under the illusion that I know all the clinically important drug interactions with any combination of medications. Always check by doing a drug interaction search!
Principle: Especially with a medication like nirmatrelvir+ritonavir (Paxlovid™), instead of referring to any notes or even an article on simpleandpractical.com, I do a NEW drug interaction search so that I am sure that I have the most up-to-date results.
But clinicians need two things that we will provide in this article:
1. Advice on which drug interaction tool is believed to be the best for checking for interactions with COVID-19 medications.
2. Tips on how to use that drug interaction tool most effectively, because it is easy to make errors in interpreting the results.
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