Caregiver Tips: How to Help Elderly People Keep to Multiple Daily Medication Regimens
How can caregivers best help elderly people keep to their daily medication regimens? Ms Lim Zhiying, Senior Medical Social Worker at Singapore General Hospital shares 4 tips.
Continued from previous page.
“Adherence to multiple treatment regimens require a multi-disciplinary approach and involve various stakeholders,” says Ms Lim Zhiying, Senior Medical Social Worker at
Singapore General Hospital (SGH), a member of the
SingHealth group.
In this article, she shares some tips for caregivers of elderly people with multiple chronic illnesses.
4 ways caregivers can help elderly people with multiple chronic illnesses keep to their medication regimens
It is helpful for caregivers to:
- Understand what the elderly person wants and values
- Talk to your loved one directly, if possible, and ask what are the things that he/she looks forward to, values, and finds important.
- When your loved one is unable to communicate with you, try to recall what is important to him/her during past interactions with you.
- Involve and empower the elderly person in the management of his/her medication regimen
- Involve your loved one in the consultation and seek his/her opinions or concerns toward the treatment regimens recommended.
- Listen to and validate your loved one’s struggles in adhering to his/her treatment regimen
- Affirm his/her efforts in adhering his/her treatment regimen.
- Provide feedback to doctors regarding the side-effects of the elderly person’s medication regimen
- Identify a primary doctor, if possible, to highlight and provide feedback on the concerns and side-effects that your loved one has in adhering to the treatment regimen.
- If you and your loved one have difficulties identifying a primary doctor, please check with a doctor whose medical discipline will be more appropriate to address the concerns your loved one has.
- Practise self-care in your caregiving journey
Some ways to care for yourself is to:
- set aside time to rest and do things that you enjoy
- attend to your own physical health
- seek help when caregiving becomes overwhelming.
See previous page to find out
why the elderly find it difficult to keep to their medication regimen.
Ref: N18