PT: Going to hospital – Going home from hospital
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
PT
Male
Age at interview: 49
Number of medicines: 7
Cultural background: Indian
PT has recently been in hospital for a heart attack. He found the written information that he received on discharge to be most helpful in managing his medicines when he was at home.
At first, the printout that I got from the pharmacist at the hospital when I was discharged was very useful. We had it in front of us every time, because it was difficult. It was difficult to have all those medicines at the right time and in the right order and all the ticks that I took all of them. It was difficult really, but that helped ... the printout. I got three photocopies of that so I didn't miss. I always had one. My wife photocopied a few of them, so that it was always available at this table, at the bedside, to me, to my wife, to my children.
So, whoever is helping me with that always had that printout and we got it right every time. It was a task at the beginning for quite some time ... quite some time! Since ... I think something changed after I got the second stent done and it changed after I got a mild heart attack ... after a few days of that. Everything changed. The printout changed again and so it had to be clearly there, the right one, not the wrong one! So that was also ... even if it was a minor thing, still it was an exercise and a task to get it right every time.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.