Is Your Mom Forgetting to Take Her Medications?

By Kimberly Burdo | January 4, 2023 | Comments Off on Is Your Mom Forgetting to Take Her Medications?

A Portuguese study of more than 1,000 older adults found that 38.8% often forgot to take their prescription pills each day. Another 14.3% found it difficult to take their pills. Finally, 10.7% were worried about the side effects. All of those reasons keep them from taking pills as prescribed.

Every day, you have to call your mom to see if she’s taken her medications. Even if you call her, you have no guarantee that she’ll hang up and take them. You can’t see her do it. This is a common, serious problem with older adults. What can you do to help her?

Invest in a Pill Organizer

A pill organizer helps your mom keep track of when she’s taken medications and when she hasn’t. Has she ever gotten up, showered, and then come out and isn’t certain if she’s taken her pills or not? At that point, she can count the number of pills left in the bottle, but that’s not always helpful.

With a pill organizer, she looks at the day to see if she’s taken them or not. But, that requires her to keep the organizer filled correctly. It also doesn’t help remind her to get the organizer and take them. If she never thinks to look at the organizer, she needs one with flashing lights or an audible alarm.

Set Up Smart Speaker Alarms

If your mom has a smart speaker, set reminders. She needs to get in the habit of getting up and asking her speaker what’s on the agenda, and her speaker will tell her to take her medications. Your mom does have to remember to ask the speaker what’s on her to-do list though.

Some also allow you to set scheduled timers. That is helpful as long as your mom knows why the timer or alarm is going off. 

Stop By and Verify She Takes Them

Do you have time in the morning to stop on your way to work? If you do, you can stop in and make sure she takes her pills before you leave. This will help if she only takes pills once a day. If she takes multiple doses, you may need to see if others are free to stop by for the other doses.

Arrange Elder Care Visits

The best option is to have a caregiver with her during the day. Not only will she have help with medication reminders, but she has a caregiver available to take her shopping, clean her home, cook her meals, and keep her company.

Hire elder care aides to offer your mom medication reminders. You don’t want her to put her health at risk. With medication reminders, your mom takes all of her pills on time. Plus, there’s someone else there to help your mom order and pick up prescription refills. Call an elder care agency to schedule caregivers.

If you or an aging loved-one is considering Elder Care in St. Peters, MO please contact the caring staff at Autumn Home Care, LLC today at 636-448-9347.

Sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6981635/

Kimberly Burdo
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