When you are a caregiver, the health and safety of your loved one often hinges on you helping them take their medicines correctly.
“Proper medication management for people with memory loss is critical,” says Vickie Armstrong, DNP, GNP-BC, nurse practitioner at Riverside Health. “If they don’t take their medicines properly, they could experience mood or behavioral changes. And if they’re taking a drug designed to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, that drug may not work as intended if taken incorrectly.”
Without your help, your loved one may not take their medicines, or they may take too much. If they have another illness that requires medication, interactions between different drugs can cause a medicine not to work or even lead to a dangerous drug reaction.
“It’s a big responsibility making sure someone takes their medicines as prescribed,” Armstrong says. “Fortunately, there are several strategies you can use to keep up with the medicines and make the job easier.” She recommends five tips for good medication management.
1. Make a medication list
A medication list will help you see in one place what your loved one takes and when. The list should include all of the prescription and over-the-counter medicines they take every day and the medicines they take only some of the time. Next to the name of each drug, write what it is used for, how much they take and when. If the drug was prescribed, write the name of the provider who prescribed it.
2. Ask your loved one’s doctor for help
If you need help creating a medication list, ask your loved one’s doctor if you can do a brown bag medicine review at their next appointment. Just bring a bag of all the labeled medicines your loved one takes, and the doctor will make a list and review it with you. A brown bag medicine review also gives the doctor an opportunity to look for any red flags in your loved one’s medicine regimen.
3. Use a pill organizer
A pill organizer makes the process tidier and more efficient — and can also help you see if a dose was missed. Make it a point to refill the box every Saturday night or Sunday morning. Keep the medication list you created with the pill organizer in case any questions arise about dosages, and put away the bottled medicines to avoid mix-ups.
4. Set reminders in your smartphone
Most smartphones let you create recurring alarm reminders in your calendar app. Add reminders with an alarm for all the times your loved one needs to take their medicines in a day and set them to repeat every day. You could also set alerts on a smart speaker such as Amazon Echo or Google Home.
5. Use pharmacy services
Never forget a refill by setting up automatic refills and pickup reminders, or use a mail-order pharmacy. Remember that pharmacists are drug experts. Your pharmacist is happy to sit down with you to review your loved one’s medication list. They can let you know if there are safe ways to simplify the regimen – for example, switching from two 50 milligram pills per day to one 100 milligram pill – and if there are any drug to drug interactions in the current regimen.
Interested in setting up a brown bag medicine review? Call your loved one’s Riverside Health provider to learn how you can do it at your next appointment.
