Micaela: The costs of taking multiple medicines – The impact of reduced work hours and low income
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Micaela
Female
Age at interview: 38
Number of medicines: 21
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Micaela’s conditions are ongoing, so she has had to drop to part-time hours, which impacts on the affordability of her medicines.
Yes. The irregular work … because of health issues, because I'm an ongoing employee at least, so I'm not non-ongoing. I've fought to keep my position with my employees [employers] and there is flexibility in the workplace so I have been able to take advantage of that. I've kept my job and I've wanted to keep it. From all the medical advice I have received as well, particularly with regards to my depression, I think, but none of them have actually advised that, if I took say six months off ... it's not like I'm going to get better, so they're all ongoing health problems, so it's not like, you know, you break your leg and you heal over ... you expect to heal over a certain amount of time and you need time out to have rehabilitation and physio and that sort of thing and you see a gradual improvement. Unfortunately, my situation has never quite been like that. So yeah, my income has gone up and down and obviously the medications hit into that. Seeing my specialists also eats into that.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.