Medicine Compliance Support
Patients sometimes need assistance to ensure they take the right drug at the right time as prescribed by their doctor.
Health Visitors, District Nurses, GP’s and family members are as aware as pharmacists of the problems many patients have when confronted with a complicated drug regimen. Lack of compliance leads to multiple doctor consultations, hospital visits and even permanent residential care.
Our Pharmacist or Technician will assess your knowledge and use of medicines and, based on the information gathered, will invite you or your carer to discuss the different types of support available to help you take your medicines as intended.
Types of support available
If you, or someone you know, finds it hard to remember what to take and when to take it a Monitored Dosage System can organise your medicines ensuring they are taken at the right time every day. They are particularly helpful for patients taking large quantities of different medication.
Also referred to as ‘blister packs’, your medicines are placed in separate compartments or ‘blisters’ according to the time you need to take them. The days of the week and time of the day are clearly labelled on the packs and this ensures that the correct medication is taken at the correct time.
You will not need to struggle with lots of tablet boxes or pushing tablets out hard to open packaging, so can be helpful for patients with restricted use of their hands, for example those suffering with arthritis. Packs can also be beneficial for the partially sighted.
Our team will fill the weekly packs with your medication in the appropriate compartments. Packs will be supplied to patients on a weekly basis or as specified by the prescriber.
A reminder chart can be printed detailing your medicines and specific dose-taking times of the day. Essentially, the chart is a snapshot of a sample days medicine regimen. They might be helpful where patients are confused about their medicine regimen or they might be forgetful, or both.
Our charts have reminders to take medicines at four times throughout the day, linking doses to routine activities to aid memory. Generally, mealtimes and bedtimes are used, however “cleaning teeth”, “reading the morning paper” or similar may be appropriate for individual patients.
Whenever your medicine are changed, you will need an updated medicine chart as well.
More than two million people are affected by sight loss across the UK, which may impact on their ability to use and take their medicines correctly and safely.
For patients that cannot read standard print labels we can provide large print labels or printing labels on A4 paper (in large bold font, and if wished on yellow paper, rather than white).
Please discuss with our pharmacist, so we can support you with your personalised requirements.