Mia: Forgetting and remembering to take medicines – Strategies that help people remember to take medicines
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Mia
Female
Age at interview: 30
Number of medicines: 12
Cultural background: Israeli-Australian
Mia finds it easier to remember to take the contraceptive pill than medication for Crohn’s disease because there is an incentive with the pill that is more immediately meaningful.
I was much better with that. There is also, as irresponsible as it seems or responsible, I don’t know, there is a slightly different incentive to taking that. A sore tummy is not quite the same as a child [laughs] so whether they are right reasons or not, because I know that the Crohn's can lead to surgery and all sorts of dreadful things. I don’t know, it's just a different incentive that seems to click better in my head. You can compare it to telling a young girl, if you tell a young girl that smoking will kill her and give her lung cancer, she is like whatever, but if you tell a young girl that smoking will make her ugly and wrinkly she might stop. It's the wrong reason to stop but it works.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.