Peter S: Knowing about multiple medicines – Acquaintances and colleagues
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Peter S
Male
Age at interview: 60
Number of medicines: 18
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Peter S’s health professionals assumed that, because he was a nurse, he would not need a great deal of information when he was diagnosed with diabetes. That was not how Peter felt.
Overall it was probably not too bad getting used to it, but the only thing I found was because I was a nurse still at that stage and my wife … my now ex-wife … is a nurse as well, they limited our education because we were nurses and we knew all about it. I can tell you being on the other side of the syringe is a lot different to actually giving the stuff and so I got really angry … not cranky angry but I started to get a bit upset and stuff about people assuming that I knew how insulin worked and how this worked and that worked. So I actually spent a week as an outpatient at the old Parramatta Hospital learning all about diabetes as if I'd had no idea and what I learnt was probably many times more than what I learnt as a nurse … not that that's a reflection on nurse training, because nurses can't be everything for everybody. But after I had that and I was comfortable with how things were progressing we basically had no problems.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.