Lyn: Messages to others – Messages for supporters
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Lyn
Female
Age at interview: 67
Number of medicines: 1
Cultural background: British-Australian
Lyn would like doctors to keep in mind that multiple medicines can be confusing for older people in particular.
Doctors do need to be aware of the broader picture and they also need to be aware that older people particularly can get confused with their multiple medications and, if they're used to taking two white and one green and suddenly the colours change, that can confuse them. I get confused sometimes mentally with my medications, which is why my husband's taking over the job of dosing them for me and producing a list. And I consider myself quite an intelligent woman. Sometimes it bugs me that I know that I couldn't organise it as well as he does, because my mind goes blank sometimes when I'm looking at the packs and thinking, ‘Oh, God! How many of these do I take and when do I take them?’ Yeah. You can get extremely confused.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.