Lyn: Speaking with health professionals – Poor communication and lack of information
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Lyn
Female
Age at interview: 67
Number of medicines: 1
Cultural background: British-Australian
Lyn found that many doctors relied on pharmacists to give her information about her medicines, which did not always happen.
Sometimes, they just prescribe these things for you and they don't really go into enough detail about why you have to have it, what it's going to do for you and whether there are going to be any side effects that you need to be concerned about. It seems to be left to the pharmacist to do that and, if the pharmacists are really busy, sometimes they don't have time to sit down and talk with you, which is why these home medicines reviews are so wonderful, because I had a pharmacist here who went through every single tablet that I took and I found it very helpful. So, yes. I think doctors should really be much more helpful in explaining to their patients exactly why they're giving ... but then the patients should be the ones to ask as well.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.