Jane: Benefits and disadvantages – Complicated medication regimens and confusion
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Jane
Female
Age at interview: 53
Number of medicines: 8
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Jane has found that the practicalities of managing medicines have been the worst thing for her, particularly when changes have been made and she does not understand the reasons why.
So, I feel like I've struggled a bit sometimes to understand why we've changed the time or the dose and wondered whether that's the right thing to have done. I guess I would still talk to the doctor about that and go with what he suggests.
I think getting them all organised. Certainly the chemist ... you know, lithium you get a script and you get two huge boxes that would last you forever. Then Ritalin, you're not allowed to go one day early before your 28 days are up or they'll tell you to go home. The number of trips to the chemist, I think. There's never ... sorry ... the scripts never all are due at the same time and so there's a juggling of those. Even just remembering the lower dose of something, the higher dose of something.
I think I've been confused in the past in trying to get them all in the right spots in their boxes and then having to put in the diary things like, ‘You can't go and get your Ritalin a day before this’ and knowing how to pace out the timing of getting those things. I know they say, ‘Do you want us to keep your scripts?’ and I think, ‘No, actually, I don't. You've got to keep one of them and I'd like to just be in control of where I go for the others.’ I think that's been the hardest thing for me, just the practical side of getting them and getting them home and taking them at the right time.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.