The older we get, the more often it is necessary to take medication to stay healthy. For many seniors, taking medication is daily. Studies show that some have to take up to 17 different medications a day! Daily medication requires a discipline that is sometimes difficult to follow, especially for elderly people with a loss of autonomy, while these treatments guarantee their safety and good health. However, having to take medication every day can be a source of errors, such as overdose, which can endanger the health of seniors in particular.
Seniors often need to take medication every day to guarantee their good health, guaranteeing a longer life expectancy and in the best possible conditions.
For those among them who are the most dependent and who, voluntarily, or more often because of age-related forgetfulness, do not remember to take their daily treatments or make mistakes in taking them, control by a third party is necessary.
If it is a very close person, a child for example, this control can be difficult for the elderly person. This is why this role is frequently delegated to third parties who come to take care of the senior at home.
Thus, the control of daily medication can be further delegated, for example, to a home helper who comes to take care of the elderly person every day at home. Without a direct family or friendly link with the elderly person, these home care professionals are better able to exercise a kind of verification than those closest to them who may be accused by the elderly person of some interference in their lives. /P>
A home helper is indeed better able to establish a bond of trust with the senior who must take medication every day and respect the dosages. These professionals, who most often intervene every day, are very familiar with the habits, the rhythms of the elderly people with whom they intervene, and necessarily the doses of medication they must take daily. These home aids are a great help so that these seniors do not make mistakes in their particular grips.
There are little tricks or material means to prevent an elderly person from making mistakes in taking their daily medication. Strings that can be used both by seniors who organize themselves to take their treatments every day, and by those who need a third party to take their medications.
First, you have to think about properly classifying the medications you have to take every day, by grouping them in the same place for example. Drawing up a written list of your medications, with for each the recommendations given by your doctor regarding their taking (number, at lunchtime, before going to bed, etc.) can be a good way to forget any of them and also not to be mistaken in their intake, especially in relation to the number of each drug to be taken each day.
This list, to be placed in a visible place and rather in a room where the elderly person spends the most time, serves as a reminder. A large calendar or post-its in neon colors can do just fine to make up this list so that you don't forget your medications, or make mistakes in taking them.
Using a pillbox, that is to say a small box that allows you to methodically store your medication, most often equipped with small storage compartments of different colors depending on when a medication must be taken, is one of the best solutions an elderly person can adopt so as not to make mistakes in taking their daily medication.
With current technological advances, today there are even electronic pill dispensers which, once programmed by their user, ring when the time to take a medication arrives. Others automatically deliver only the necessary doses of medication. A very good solution to avoid oversights, but above all the risk of making mistakes in terms of dosage, which is perfectly suited to the elderly who have memory problems or dementia for example.
For connected seniors and smartphone users, their daily medication can also be made easier thanks to mobile applications, which are usually very easy to use. The latter, once configured and personalized by creating a profile adapted to each person, alert when it is time to take a medication. Some of these applications even accompany their alerts with a photo of the medicine box, in order to prevent the user from making a mistake when taking it.
