Keeping It Straight: How Seniors Can Manage Multiple Medications

When people are young, they often dream of the idyllic years they'll spend as retirees. Fantasies overflow with visions of golf games, fishing trips, exotic vacations, grandchildren, and relaxed summer afternoon spent reminiscing in the shade. Years pass and even as many of these dreams come true, they arrive accompanied by their own, new set of challenges. The older people get, the more careful tending they require to maintain their health. Usually this means a growing collection of prescription medications begin to overtake the medicine cabinet.

While the goal of taking all of these medicines is to keep a patient safe and healthy, the sheer volume of medication many retirees take on a daily basis forces concern. With so many pills to take, all at prescribed times and intervals, it can be hard for even the most sharp-witted individual to keep it straight. Missed doses and over dosing become increasingly dangerous risks with each new medication prescribed. Add to that a trend to see a revolving cast of specialists, and order medications online, and the safety equation lacks two basic fail safes: a general practitioner and a family pharmacist. In the old days, these faithful guardians of health were able to oversee medical care and catch oversights, like potential drug interactions. With modern day medical models intact, the responsibility for coordinating medications falls upon the patient and his or her caretakers.

Safe use of prescriptions is possible with just a few precautions. In all ways, organization is key. As a patient or caretaker, adhering to the following guidelines will make it easy to protect one's health while deriving the greatest possible benefit from the medicine:

Keep All Medications In One Place

Storing medications in a single place within the home makes it easy to find them when they're needed. If a patient usually takes his or her pills in the kitchen, versus the bathroom, it makes sense to store their prescriptions there. Doing so makes it easy to incorporate medication into one's routine. Convenience makes missed dosages much less likely. Accessibility is another crucial component in medication management. Buying a small rotating shelf unit makes all pills easier to reach and visible. Organizing this shelf so that medications taken in the morning are grouped together, all nighttime medications are together, and so forth, makes for blissful simplicity when it comes time to take one's pills.

Label Clearly

The print on many medication bottles is extremely small and hard for mature eyes to read. Illegibility of labels is a culprit in many cases of incorrect dosing every year. The simple act of relabeling each medication with large lettering that includes the name of the drug, and instructions regarding when to take it protects seniors from unnecessary calamity.


Keep A List

Anyone taking more than two medications daily should keep a list of all their medications and supplements handy. Should symptoms of an unforeseen drug interaction present themselves, having such a list assists medical teams in determining how best to remedy the situation. Taking this list to a pharmacist or family doctor gives them vital information to be used when determining whether a new prescription is suitable as well.

Prescription medicines are a virtually unavoidable fact of modern life. A few subtle adjustments to the way a patient manages them can be life saving.