Linda: Forgetting and remembering to take medicines – Helpful reminders
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Linda
Female
Age at interview: 53
Number of medicines: 5
Cultural background: British
Linda needs to see her medicines if she is to remember to take them. No other reminder or strategy has worked for her.
Linda:
I've never taken it the same time every day. It's kind of ... the medications are there on the kitchen bench and that's what reminds me to take them, nothing else. It's not like analgesia, you think, ‘If I don't take this, I can feel the pain coming back,’ to remind you, a trigger. There are no triggers to me, regardless of what my symptoms are; it isn’t ‘Ooh, I must take my tablets.’ It never happens! They're there and I think, ‘I'll take them.’
Jacqueline:
So, it's a very visual thing.
Linda:
Very visual thing, yeah. If they weren't out on the bench, I would forget to take them and that's happened to me always through my life when I've had to take things. If I don't see them, I don't take them. And that's, yeah, that’s including painkillers, when I had a really bad back ... really, really ... which resulted in quite extensive back surgery, I still didn't take analgesics because I didn't see them, regardless of the fact that I could barely walk.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.