Emma: Routines with multiple medicines – Orderly strategies to support medication regimens
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Emma
Female
Age at interview: 41
Number of medicines: 19
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Emma associates taking her medicines with her everyday routines of getting up in the morning, having breakfast and going to bed.
I would take my midodrine which is for my blood pressure. So every night before I go to bed I need to remember to take a glass of water into my bedroom and sit it next to my bed so that when I set my alarm to wake up that I see that and I remember to take that particular drug. So then I need to lie in bed half an hour until my blood pressure's gone up enough before I actually stand up and get out. Then I guess I would immediately go and have breakfast because getting in a hot shower's not ideal yet. My blood pressure's probably not high enough. So I guess when I go to have my cereal I see the medicine in the fridge. So that would be my Florinef that I would take with my breakfast. So I would take that out before I actually eat because I can see that it's sitting there because I have taken it out, like put the milk back in the fridge and forgotten it on one occasion. So I now take it out and I leave it sitting there until I've actually eaten my food, not the whole jar, just the half a tablet, so just remember that I need to refrigerate it. Then I know it's sitting there to take with the rest of my tablets. That also reminds me to take the others with it anyway, even though they're sitting next to me just in that little path, a tablet there.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.