“You have to be creative and foxy sometimes”, says Matsonia about resolving a medication issue with the nurses in a care facility.
Transcript
That’s the hard part—when you send someone, you’re trusting another person to look after your husband for you and you’re trusting them. And yet, I’m saying don’t trust them. Be on top of it. You have to know what’s going on.
The problem I was having with all the facilities [was] that they were not giving his pills on time right from the very first start in the morning. So, normally here at home, we start his meds at 7 o’clock in the morning unless we have an early appointment somewhere, then maybe I’ll start his pills at 6 or 6:30 in the morning and then every 2½ hours after that. When I do start his pills at 6 am in the morning, it really does make for a short day for him, because it means his pills run out sooner so he’s more apt to go to bed at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. It also means I need to serve him supper a lot earlier as well.
Anyway, when we’re at [a residential care facility], we sat down and talked about it and it finally dawned on me. They said, “Well the reason why we can’t give him his 7 am pills is because we’re doing our shift change. We’re doing our night nurse/day nurse shift change at 7 am so that’s why he’s not getting his pills until 7:30, 8-8:30 in the morning.” Well, by then, then he was due for his pills again at 9:30. So I got smart and I went to our other neurologist—we have one locally as well, because it’s too hard to go to [the university hospital] every time there’s a problem. So we also have a neurologist here and we just love him and he rewrote the prescription for me to say that he’s supposed to get his pills at 6 in the morning. So this way, the night nurse has to give him his pills at 6 am. She’s got nothing else going on. She’s not doing her shift change, so she can’t get out of it. So this has worked like lucky charms. Even though I give him his pills at 7, but when he goes to these facilities, they start his pills at 6. That’s helped.
Trial and error; you just have to get creative and foxy sometimes.
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