Adverse drug events are the reason why older adults aged 65 years or older visit emergency rooms 450,000 times each year. These kinds of complications, which happen when the interaction of two or more drugs produce a negative reaction from the body, is the reason why older adults aged 65 years or older are seven times more likely to be hospitalized than younger people!
With the increasing number of prescriptions that people have to take, it’s easy to see why keeping track of when and how much medicine to take is a challenge. Moreover, the confusing and foreign-sounding names don’t help either!
The only real way to solve this problem is through education. In fact, this advice serves both doctors and patients alike! Doctors need to know which medications a patient is already taking to avoid prescribing any medicine known to cause adverse drug events.
If you have any concerns about your treatment, then it’s wise to be upfront about it to your doctor. Here are three common issues that most seniors have about their medication and the steps that you can take to address them.
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Difficulty in keeping track of each medication
Medicines come with a lot of instructions that can be difficult to commit to memory. Some drugs need to be taken on an empty stomach, while others can be harmful if taken before a meal. Some medicines have to be taken only on particular hours of the day, whereas others are so crucial to maintaining homeostasis that a day without them can cause serious harm to your health.
Some people solve this by having a private nurse to attend to their needs. However, this can be a costly option that not everybody can afford! Fortunately, there are free prescription tracker apps, such as MedManage, that you can use to help you take your medications in time.
Different apps will have various features. However, useful medication tracker apps have built-in medication reminder systems that only need to be set up once. Once the schedule has been configured, the app will display automatic alerts for a scheduled dose and even keep a digital daily log of the medicines taken.
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Fear of taking too much medication
It’s normal to feel apprehension about the effects of taking several prescription drugs at a time. However, as mentioned above, knowledge is power! For the best results, ensure that you are always upfront to your doctor of any preexisting medical conditions and the course of treatments you are currently taking.
Having all of your doctors—especially if you have more than one—updated about your medical history helps them make the correct prescriptions to address your issue. For this reason, it’s essential to have a list of all the medications that you are taking, the name of the prescribing doctor, possible side effects, and the manner of ingestion, whether it’s oral, injection, or under the tongue.
To make things simpler, you can use a medication tracker app to easily supply this information to your physician. Because most of such apps are cloud-based, the data is retained even if you lose your mobile phone!
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Medication is too expensive
Sometimes, the cost of medication can be so prohibitive that some seniors stop taking them altogether. The good news is that there are cost-effective alternatives to commonly prescribed drugs! You can ask your doctor for cheaper brands or compare prices with pharmacists.
For added convenience, medication tracker apps, such as MedManage, can connect you with a pharmacist to see if there are available cost-effective alternatives to the brand prescribed by your physician. Aside from that, the app can allow you to take your medicine on-time without going over the recommended dosage—which reduces the possibility of wasted medicines each week!
Conclusion
As we grow older, it’s natural for some people to seek more medication and treatment. Being more susceptible to injuries and medical conditions is a part of the aging process, after all. The more prescription medicines that a senior has to take, the more difficult it can be to keep track of them and take them correctly. To solve this problem, senior patients and their caretakers need to use medication management apps to record their daily prescriptions and to be ready to present it to an attending physician.
MedManage is a medication management app designed to simplify medication adherence. The app is fully-featured and free to use, but it also provides some paid extra services, such as video sessions and early access to new features. Download the app today on Android and iOS!