Karen: The attitudes of others – Taking ‘many’ medicines (3)
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Karen
Female
Age at interview: 37
Number of medicines: 8
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Karen has found a standard response to any question about her medicines that works most of the time. When it does not work, she feigns vagueness.
So my general answer is, ‘I've talked to my GP. I've got a great GP and we've worked out the best combination that keeps me functioning pretty well, and that's what I take’, and I can play dumb if I need to. Yeah … it's so far outside of other people's experience that they kind of freak out that you're taking all of this stuff. I freak out at the number of things that I'm taking.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.