Managing medications can be confusing and overwhelming. Failure to properly manage medications can be life-threatening. It can lead to hospitalizations and possibly result in not being able to remain living at home.
This puts an emphasis on families to ensure that their loved ones are taking their medications in strict compliance with their physician’s directions.
There are estimates that more than 34% of seniors are prescribed medications by more than 1 physician.
There are studies that say that 44% of men and 57% of women older than 65 are taking 5 or medications every every week, with many of them 10 or more per week.
The following tips may help:
- keep a list of medications including over the counter items and any vitamin/supplements. It may be beneficial to provide this to any doctors or pharmacies that you use.
- Understand what each medication does and why it is prescribed. You can ask your pharmacist to do a medication review for this purpose
- Ask for help from any caregivers that are in attendance; a friendly reminder to let them know to take their medication may help
- Make sure you are aware of any potenital side effects and monitor for them especially when a medication has been changed or added. Report them to your doctor or pharmacist. They may suggest an alternative.
- Use pills sorters. They can keep the medications organized and eliminate error. These organizers should have individual compartments for each dose. Optimally they should be separated by time and day, and labeled clearly.
Echo Pharmacy uses Dispill ® medication managment system. It eliminates that need to create pill boxes and sort medications.
There are also detachable individual packs to take on the go.
It can serve up to 4 different dosage times a day.