Karen: Speaking with health professionals – The importance of good communication
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 feels she has been able to ask her neurosurgeon all of her questions because he encouraged her to ask them at her last appointment, despite how busy and behind schedule he was.
Actually, that was the thing with my neurosurgeon that I really appreciated. The last time I saw him for the surgery, I knew he was busy, there was someone waiting. I was the last patient he was seeing and he was then supposed to be going in and doing surgery. He'd gone and put on his surgical stuff and everything, but he just kept asking me ... ‘What other questions do you have? I know you've got more questions. What other questions do you have?’ on my last appointment before the surgery, so I got plenty of opportunity to ask every question I could think of before the surgery. Like I said, I could see that he was obviously running late and busy and needed to go, but he wasn't kicking me out or leaving the room until every question I had was answered, which impressed me. He could have easily answered a couple of questions and then, ‘Fine. Great.’ But he kept checking.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.