Overview:
The Living with Multiple Medicines project is an in-depth examination of people’s experiences and management of multiple medicines. This project aimed to improve our understanding of people’s experiences of medicines and their health and illness, and provide resources to support people living with a wide variety of health conditions, their families, friends and the health professionals involved in their care. Our researcher travelled around Australia to talk to 40 people (including 5 doctors and 1 pharmacist) in their own homes or workplaces about issues such as:
- how they feel about taking multiple medicines;
- communicating with others; and
- problems they had with their medicines and how these were resolved.
Participants were men and women from varied backgrounds in terms of age, cultural and socio-economic background, geographic location and sexuality. Their stories were video or audio-recorded then analysed to capture both overall findings from all interviews, as well as individual stories, illustrated by video, audio and written excerpts.
Through the Living with Multiple Medicines project, participants’ information is used in several ways:
- to develop support and information resources for people using multiple medicines;
- for research: to find out what is important to people using multiple medicines;
- to train health and social care professionals; and
- to enable visitors to the Living with Multiple Medicines website (below) to see and hear participants share their personal stories on film.
Healthtalk Australia online resource:
Living with Multiple Medicines
(located on the NPS MedicineWise website)
An introduction by Professor Ric Day
Funding Body:
Investigators:
Dr Jacqueline Tudball
Lead Investigator
Dr Lorraine Smith
Co-Investigator
Ms Margaret Williamson
Team Leader, NPS MedicinesWise
Advisory Panel:
Alice Bhasale
formerly at NPS MedicinesWise
Ric Day
Professor, University of New South Wales
Sue Healey
Consumer representative
Elizabeth Manias
Professor, University of Melbourne
Kath Ryan
Associate Professor, La Trobe University
Sarah Spagnardi
NPS MedicinesWise
Margaret Williamson
NPS MedicinesWise