Glenn: Knowing about multiple medicines – Important considerations when searching for information
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Glenn
Male
Age at interview: 50
Number of medicines: 6
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Glenn suggests that people look for information regularly and review what they know, so that it is up-to-date.
I would make sure that they're aware of the side effects, they've read all of the literature they can get their hands on. The pharmacist that I go to, if they hand out pamphlets on medications … he doesn't give them to me anymore because I think I've read them enough times.
But I also will go onto a website; I'll go onto the equivalent of MIMS or something like that and read about it before I even start it because I find that there is a lack of information given by GPs when they prescribe medications. Because if they don't give the information, if the pharmacist doesn't give the information, who is going to give it to you? So I've always made a point of reading and since computers we've had it so much easier, the information is at our fingertips.
So I'm usually aware of what side effects can … may happen, so I would make sure that someone was very, very well aware of the side effects. The full literature, the interactions, the things not to do, the things to do and they are very important. Even now four years later, I'll still go back and read about the side effects and things of it because they do change and you do forget.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.