Medications are often part of everyday life. You don’t need to be chronically ill to utilize medications. A simple headache could put you under medicine. The central aspect of medication revolves around taking care of them to ensure they don’t decline in quality. Medication management is easy to handle in a hospital setting, considering professionals, such as nurses, ensure that everything is stored and used as needed. They also have the right tools to store these medicines and ensure they are as instructed.
4 Medication Management Tips And Practices For Your Household
However, the narrative changes once you get home after your physician has given you drugs to help bring back your health to its optimum. How will you handle the medications to ensure they’re in the best state as you consume them and ingest them as your doctor instructed? Worry not—this article highlights tips and practices you can adopt for effective medication management in your household. Read on!
Consider doing the following:
Have A Storage Cabinet
You probably have a cabinet to store your kitchen utensils, food items, toiletries, and your household. Similarly, create a small compartment where you’ll store all your medications. A storage cabinet ensures you don’t lose any medicine and miss taking it since you can’t find it.
Ensure the cabinet is in a hard-to-reach area, especially for small children. It should be of considerable height, not too high or low. Also, consider adding a locking system, such that the medications will always be locked in, limiting access.
Most homeowners tend to have their medicine cabinets in their bathrooms behind their mirrors. The bathroom isn’t ideal for storing your medicines since it’s moisture-prone. All medicines need to be stored in a cool and dry environment to prevent altering the composition of the drugs. Thus, find a suitable location in your home that’s often free from moisture and away from direct sunlight. A cabinet above your sink along your corridor should suffice, as long as it won’t interfere with human traffic and cause accidents.
Regularly Inspect Your Medicine Cabinet
Once you have all your medications, you must regularly inspect them, preferably once a month.
During the inspection, you need to check the expiry date of each. Doing so eliminates consuming drugs that are no longer fit for your consumption. Ingesting expired medications will only jeopardize your health instead of making it better. You should also identify those that need refills and request them before completely depleting them. This way, you won’t miss out on any dose, which might affect your body’s effectiveness.
Inspecting your medicine cabinet also involves getting rid of any medication you no longer use. Getting rid of those removes clutter and ensures you have a clean space. You may check out a great post to read on organizing your medicine cabinet if you need further guidance.
Consider Purchasing A Pillbox
Certain illnesses require you to take several medications at once. Handling all these medicines can be challenging. You might forget to take one or take the wrong dosage. Also, you might not have adequate time each morning or evening to sort out all that you require to take. This is where a pillbox will come in handy.
Most pillboxes are divided into several sections, such that each is marked on a given day of the week. Ensure you get a pillbox whose size goes hand in hand with the number of drugs you take. Others will have sub-sections, where you place the drugs you need in the morning, afternoon, and the like. With this system, you must place the drugs you’ll need throughout the week in their respective slots and the proper dosage. You won’t need to rummage through your medicine cabinet each morning to get the medicines you need.
Be sure to place your pillbox in an easily accessible area where you can see it, such as on your bedside table, to avoid forgetting.
Label All Medications
Labeling is an effective way of managing your medicines. It’ll prevent you from confusing the drugs, such that you end up taking the wrong one. This is especially true if the drugs are similar in color and size.
Consider labeling them in big, legible letters, especially for children and senior adults. They’re more prone to making errors as they pick out their medicines. Besides writing their names in bold, outline each one’s dosage—for instance, if it’s one tablet twice a day, write that.
Conclusion
This article has shown that you can easily manage your medications at home. You don’t need to worry about adopting complex systems or if you’ll be able to manage to handle your medicines yourself. Consider implementing the tips discussed herein, and you’ll have an easy time with your medications. Most importantly, you won’t miss out on any dosage.
