Communication and Information Sharing

Communicating with people who might help with medications

Part of managing your medications may include providing instructions to someone who is helping you. Someone that may help you could include a caregiver, family member, friend, PSW, or co-worker. This video contains from strategies for communicating with people who may help with your medications. These strategies are also listed below.

Consider following some of these steps to help make the communication process easier:

  1. Identify:
    • Identify what task you would like help with. Some tasks may include reading labels, opening containers, placing medication in your hand or mouth, picking up refills, and keeping a record of medications.
    • Next, identify who can provide support, this may be a family member, friend, co-worker, or personal support worker. Think about if this is someone who provides support regularly, or if it is someone new, as this may impact the next steps.
  2. Instruct:
    • Clearly state the instructions to the individual helping with the task. If this individual will be helping you on an ongoing basis, consider providing them with written instructions.
    • If a task has several steps, breakdown the task into a list and provide details for each step. For example, you may need to ask someone to go to a different room to get your dosette from your bedside table, open the appropriate section, pour the medications into a cup, then return the dosette to the bedside table.
  3. Remind:
    • Remind the person who is helping you to only help with what you request and ask them to do. Sometimes individuals will want to provide more help than what is asked for, it is okay to stop them and remind them what you need help with.
  4. Ask:
    • Ask the person who is helping you if they have any questions before starting the task. Make sure they fully understand what you are asking them to do, especially if it is more complex or has multiple steps. One way to do this is to get them to explain back to you what you have asked.
  5. Communicate Openly:
    • Check-in with the person providing support by having an ongoing conversation about how the support

Example conversation

Ahmad: “Hi Jamie. I need some help opening my dosette to get my medications out, would you be able to help?”

Jamie: “Hi Ahmad, I would be happy to help.”

Ahmad: “Thank you. I have the dosette here, can you just open the section that is labelled for Tuesday afternoon. Once the lid is open, I can do the rest.”

Jamie: “Sure, I am able to help.”

Ahmad: “Do you have any questions?”

Jamie: “Nope, no questions.”

Ahmad: “I appreciate your help. This is working well for me.”

Jamie: “No problem, anytime Ahmad.”