Dr Brendan Beaton: Travelling with multiple medicines – Views of health professionals
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Dr Brendan Beaton
Main occupation: Haematology registrar/fellow
Years in clinical practice: 10
Qualifications: MBBS
Dr Brendan Beaton, haematologist, reiterates some of the issues discussed about travelling with medicines. He describes what doctors can do to help.
If you have to take one or two tablets yourself, you have to remember not just to take them when you're at home, when you have a routine, which can be difficult enough. If I'm on five days’ worth of antibiotics, I have trouble remembering to take them all and that's just for five days, but, you know, if patients need to travel or something unexpected happens, if you are on one or two medications, that's fine.
But often we have people who are on multiple medications and just packing up quickly to go interstate can be difficult. Travelling overseas is often a major issue for people, depending on where they're going. Some countries have very strict laws about what medications can come through customs. I think, if a patient is travelling and they're taking a lot of medications, they need to, very early, see a GP, because often it's a good idea for us to write letters to accompany the person when they are going through customs, to say, ‘This person has these conditions and needs these medications for these reasons', so that they're not confiscated. Also planning travel, those sorts of things, it's important to make sure you've got enough medication to go with you or that letters are written for doctors overseas, to write prescriptions for you, so that you can be continuing them.
I think people don't give enough credence to planning ahead for travel, um, and a lot of medications can be a major impact in your life at home and you've got a routine. But it’s almost more troublesome, I think, when you're travelling.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in
collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.