Activity to ensure safe medication consumption
Well, I talk about languages and language barrier from my last post. This time I would like to shift to language and medication consumption.
Background
Medication management is an important activity for the therapist. This activity can indicate whether the patient can go back home independently and safely with their prescriptions: If the patients cannot safely take their medications, their health would be in jeopardy after they went home.
Personal Experiences
Back in my inpatient rehab fieldwork, therapist frequently assigned patients to complete medication management as a therapeutic activity o work on their fine motor/ dexterity skills and their cognitive abilities. However, while I was treating patients in the skilled nursing facility, I never see therapist, other than me, asking patients to complete medication management. I do not know if this is because the facility I went to does not value the activity, or because most of the patients in the facility have severe cognitive deficits. What do you think? Please comment below!
I find that when patients struggled with this activity, they may be demonstrating:
1) Impulsivity because they started the activity without looking at the prescription first. 2) Low vision: They cannot see the prescription
3) Decreased fine motor skills/dexterity
4) Loss of sensation.
What is your experience like? Please comment below!
Here are the tools that you will need:
Printer (Cite to the "Brother" printer)
Tape (Cite to the "Tartan" tape)
A pair of scissors
3 different color straws (for 3 different types)
Tape
Marker
Pill Organizer
3 Prescription VIals
Steps:
1) Make your prescriptions:
I purposely put the same prescription in 3 different languages because these are the common languages spoken in my skilled nursing facility. However, depending on the facility that you are working in, these prescriptions may unfortunately be not as useful.
2) Cut the prescriptions out
3) Stick the tape to the prescription
4) Stick the tape and the prescription to the bottle
5) Let's make the pills: Use a sharpie to mark the straw at 0.5 cm apart.
6) Cut the pills out
7) Put the pills in the prescription vial!
8) Repeat the whole thing for the other prescriptions.
Good luck!
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