Most of the medications of senior citizens are comprised of a lot of pills, sometimes varying from six to ten pills. Sometimes, because of the diversity of these different medications, the elderly are having a hard time keeping track of their different medicines. There are a lot of drug-related errors that are being reported everyday, and these errors most often result to emergency situations especially if you miss a dose from your daily medications. This is why managing your medications is very important to avoid any side effects and further medical conditions.
Senior citizens as well as their health care provider, care giver and their adult children should be aware of the detrimental effects of missing a dose of medicine, the different drug interactions from other medicines being taken and their side effects. The health and safety of older people are being compromised when they try to reduce their expenses through lessening their dosage. Hoarding and sharing are not unheard of situations, as well as not completing their prescription because of the high costs of these medicines. These can result to serious health problems and may even cause their current medical condition to be agitated.
Tips for Managing Medications
- Always have your primary care doctor, pharmacist or health care provider check your prescription medication at least once every year so that they can review and verify that these medications and drugs are still appropriate and useful for your medical condition. Since new types of drugs and treatments are being developed every year, having them verify the combinations of medicines you are taking will ensure that you will not experience harmful side effects.
- Make sure that you are managing medications by storing your medicines properly. You should be aware that storing your medications in your bathroom medicine cabinet causes them to lose their potency because of the tendency of getting damp or wet. It is recommended that you keep your medications in dry places such as bedroom or kitchen cabinets. Just make sure that you will be keeping them locked away from the reach of smaller children who may play with them or ingest them.
- Keep the correct medicine in their proper medicine bottles. This is most common in people who are always on the go or who are always traveling with medication. Never mix other medications in the same bottle. This might help you save space, but this might cause further medical conditions.
- Always check your prescription medicines for their expiration date to verify if they are still useful or if they have already expired.
- If you are about to dispose expired medicines, make sure that you do it properly by flushing them down the toilet. This ensures that no child will ingest them if you throw them in a garbage can.
- You can always ask your doctor, health care provider or pharmacist to help you manage your medications. You should always try to develop a relationship with them so that you can ask them anything about how to properly manage medications, how to properly use your pills and the possible drug interactions that your different medicines may have with one another. If you are getting your medication via mail order pharmacy, you can always contact them through phone to ask them any questions regarding your medications.
- You can opt to go with a mail order pharmacy especially if your medical condition is chronic. Some benefit programs offer services by mail order pharmacies such as medication refills to treat these conditions. Ordering through a mail service pharmacy has a lot of benefits too, especially for the elderly. These features include safety, cost saving and convenience.
- Having your medications delivered by mail order services means that they will have a record of all your prescriptions and their pharmacists can always check for any harmful drug interactions that may result to side effects before they dispense it.
- By mail service orders, senior citizens have the opportunity to receive a 90-day medication supply instead of the usual 30-day medication supply provided by local pharmacies. This is very cost-efficient and beneficial to senior citizens who have lower sources of income.
- Since most mail service pharmacies provide their services through phone, mail or through the internet, many senior citizens, especially those who have problems with mobility, will find ordering through mail service pharmacies a great convenience.
- Always find time to consult your doctor, your health care provider or your adult children about the possibility of replacing your branded drugs with generic ones. Generic drugs that have been deemed equivalent to branded drugs in terms of therapy are considerably cheaper and much more affordable.
- Your health plan or your local pharmacy may be providing opportunities for cost savings, so check with them every once in a while to see if there are any available discounts cards for your prescription medicines. This is one way of saving a lot of money especially if you are managing medications.
- One of the most common mistakes of a lot of people who are managing medications is ordering online through unknown websites. Remember that not all websites have been approved and licensed to sell these drugs, so you should only order online from a licensed website by checking with your health plan provider or your local pharmacy.
All in all, managing medications is a challenging task especially for senior citizens. This should not be a problem though, as long as you ask your health care provider or pharmacist to help you manage your medications safely. Always remember to take your medicines the same time everyday, and if possible, use only one pharmacy to get your medications from. Always ask your doctor about side effects when you take medication.
