Jan: Travelling with multiple medicines – Preparing to travel with multiple medicines
Listen to patients and health professionals speak about their experience with taking multiple medicines.
Jan
Female
Age at interview: Undisclosed
Number of medicines: 15
Cultural background: Anglo-Australian
Jan would find it impossible to take all of her complementary medicines when she goes away. Taking medicines on holidays has been an increasing problem over the years.
No, except that when I do go away, you know, for say a week or something, as I did fairly recently … I was actually away for two weeks recently … and I had to take all these medications with me and make sure that I remember to put them all in. And in fact, I think I didn't bother trying to cart around the fish oil and I figured that that wasn't going to be critical for a week or two.
But there are some things, if I was away for a greater length of time, there are some things, I guess, particularly the fish oil that I wouldn't be able to take. It is a bit of a pain having to make sure you've got everything with you.
In fact, I was talking to a woman at a 50th birthday party not very long ago, who had come over from Adelaide. And she was saying, ‘Oh, God! It's such a pain sort of packing now!’ She said, ‘Once, I just had to make sure I had clean underwear.’ She said, ‘Now I've got to get all my bottles of medication out and sort of make sure I've got all of them ready.’ And I said, ‘Yes! I have exactly that experience.’ It's just something that you have to do.
The Living with multiple medicines project was developed in collaboration with Healthtalk Australia.