When you take various medicines with different complications, there are more chances to face any mistake. It is a little tricky to organize your medication when you or your loved ones are suffering from any health disorder or other chronic conditions.
You may forget any dose or take an overdose and it will get you to some serious side effects. According to CDC, in 2019 more than 70000 deaths occurred due to overdose in the USA. Therefore, it is necessary for you and your loved ones to manage your medication schedule.
If you want to have a speedy recovery and get better medicines results, read this article and follow the instructions given below.
In this article, we will discuss smart goals for medication management but first, let’s talk about staying safe and making sure that the medications are used properly and can work like they are supposed to.
The following tips will make this job easier:
- Don’t take any medicine without prescribed by healthcare professional.
- Always take your supply at the exact time and never miss any dose.
- Avoid taking two or more items at once. Always take a break between two supplies. Drug interaction will take you to side effects.
- Keep drug in its container with own label. Check the expiry date before having medicine.
- Remember what to take medicine with, with food, water or an empty stomach.
Ways to Manage Your Medication
Let’s look at a system to help organize and track medication each day. These 5 simple ideas will help you to know, how to manage prescription medication at home?
1. Make a List
First of all, create a list of all your prescription medications and organize them with their name, dosage, schedule, and adverse effects if you feel ever.
Put the full name of the patient on top of the list. Share this list with your health provider and pharmacist and keep a copy of this list with yourself. Update this list when you have new items to take.
2. Create a Chart
Make a chart of your medicines. You can create this on Excel, word, or even white paper. List all medicines in separate lines with their time schedule, name, what are they for…
The American Cancer Society has created an online health manager, where you can find different types of worksheets to help manage your medication. You can check it here.
3. Pill Box
Another effective way to remind yourself is a pill organizer. They have separate colored boxes with days of the week and each time of day. You could put it yourself. It is a great way to manage your medications at home.
4. Use Apps
If you use a mobile phone or tablet, there are several medication apps and gadgets available on the internet. You can set a specific time schedule and name of the medicine on these apps and get reminded to take medicine.
You might be using an alarm to get up early in the morning then why you can’t set alarm as a pill reminder?
5. Medical Alert Device
There are different kinds of alert devices available in the market and even you can purchase them online. You can set proper time, about dose and other instruction of your medicine. It will remind you on time and act as your assistant.
Hopefully using these ways will help ease your mind as you navigate this part of care. Which procedure are you going to adopt? Tell us in the comment section.
