Medication Management for Geriatric Patients

A lot of older people take a TON of medication, and these meds might have to be on various schedules. In particular, I currently have a friend whose geriatric mother will be undergoing oral procedures soon and she will be on a very confusing assortment of drugs with different dosing times. Do any of you all have good ideas on how to allow the geriatric mother to take these pills independently without getting confused?

My original contributing idea was to take a short, wide piece of posterboard and do a timeline from left to right, taping the pill (in a tiny bag) beneath the date/time…so she'd just go to the chart and see the date/time and take the pill that was taped there. But the friend pointed out, rightfully, that this would probably be insulting to her mother, insinuating she cannot keep up with her medications. I think the current plan is to get several different pill boxes so that each medication has its own pill box, and then segment them by time. Or something. I don't know if I understood the plan correctly. The point is, it's very obvious my friend is not the first one to have to wonder about this – do any of you all have ideas, based on personal experience or OT knowledge,  to help manage lots of pills at different times without making it too confusing OR insulting intelligence?

Please comment if you do!

Thanks!

Karen
PS: Tomorrow is (at least for my blogging purposes), SENSORY INTEGRATION DAY! GET EXCITED!

Aug 26, 2007 | Category: Occupational Therapy | Comments: 4