Children who are disabled, chronically ill or are suffering from an acute illness often require multiple medications to minimize pain and discomfort or to help their bodies heal. Similarly, millions of children – as many as one in five – struggle with mental health or learning challenges, according to the Child Mind Institute, and require a combination of medicines to help them deal with emotional and behavioral issues stemming from one or more disorders.
What follows are 4 tips that can help you more easily manage your child’s multiple prescriptions, to ensure he or she avoids drug interactions, minimizes unwelcome side effects, and takes the right dosage at the right time.
Coordinate care. In some cases, different doctors may prescribe medications for your child. Coordinate care between the doctors, and monitor that they closely communicate with one another. Make sure your child’s entire medical team, caregivers and even teachers, are aware when one doctor prescribes a new medication. Check in with everyone to see how your child is doing on the new treatment.
Watch for side effects. Medications can come with unwanted side effects, which can render the treatment ineffective or not sustainable. Carefully observe how your child responds to each medication. Introduce new medications one at a time so you can evaluate any side effects individually.
Encourage older children to help manage their own medications. When children experience chronic health issues, they may feel a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Their illness or disability may also mean lost days of school, diminished social opportunities, increased isolation and loss of self-esteem. Allowing your child to take a slightly more active role in his or her healthcare can be empowering. One step toward becoming increasingly autonomous and developing self-care skills is taking medications, says The National Institutes of Health, adding that parents may still continue to provide the medication or remind the child to take his or her meds.
Use dosage packs. Some pharmacies can package medications into individual dosage packs, which makes it easy to dispense medication safely. Using the customized medication dose packs from PersonalRX® can help you stay on top of your child’s medication schedule and minimize dosage errors. And not only can PersonalRX help you deal with your child’s medication schedule, the dose packs can make it easy for older children to administer their own meds.
Want to more easily manage your child’s multiple medication regimen? PersonalRX is a licensed personalized pharmacy that offers custom-created dose packs that are clearly labeled with instructions and delivered to your doorstep every month. PersonalRX assigns all customers a personal care coordinator who coordinates shipments and copays and works with the patient’s healthcare providers. You’ll be able to streamline medication management, easily and successfully.
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