I couldn’t stress enough how dangerous it is for seniors to commit medication mistakes. However, if you juggle five or more kinds of medication a day, it is not impossible to slip once in a while – even your caregiver can slip, if he or she is not too careful of what they are giving you. It is important to note that medication mistakes may not only land you in an emergency room, it can even kill you!
If managing several meds a day, you might want to get systematic about it. This way, you’ll have a “system” to fall back into if your memory and eyes failed you. Below are some more tips on how to avoid medication mistakes:
· Illegible prescription. I personally don’t depend on my prescription alone; I Google things first before actually buying my medications. This is because, every now and then, I stumble upon a prescription with a really bad doctor’s scrawl, it was barely readable. You can skip the Google part by asking your doctor to write down what the drug is for right beside the prescribed drug. This way, the pharmacist won’t be confused.
· Bad drug interactions. Each drug has their own side effects thus when mixing a drug or two, it is possible that they won’t interact positively with each other. The best thing to do is to always take with you a list of medications you are currently taking whenever you consult a doctor and show them your list if they need to prescribe a drug for you. Also, observe yourself on first few days upon taking the new medication to gauge if you are having a bad drug interaction.
· Oversedation. Most drugs have sedative effects such as drowsiness, sleepiness or dizziness. When you take a drug with this kind of effect then you take another with the same kind of effect, then you boost their sedation effect which is really bad for your nervous system.
· Wrong dosage for your ideal requirement. There are three things you need to take note of when receiving a prescription note: the name of the medication, dosage and frequency of use. These three you need to get exactly right each and every time. Moreover, you need to really examine the medication you just bought from the pharmacy to determine if you got the right drug name and dosage.
· Drinking while under medication. You know better than to mix drugs with alcohol right? While there are some drugs safe enough to take and drink afterward, most are not so to be on the safer side, just don’t drink alcohol.
· Different brand names, same generic name. Please take some time to examine your medications and read/compare generic names. It may be doctor A gave you brand A then doctor B gave you brand B although they have the same generic name, if this happens, it only means you’re taking twice the amount of meds you need.