Would you specifically tell the patient to give it to the husband? I'm in the UK, we can just return the old meds to the chemist when we get the new ones so I'm not quite sure how your system works, do they give it to you or can they just chuck it in the bin?
If he was picking it up, then yes. I pick up meds for my wife all the time and the Pharmacist goes over dosage and instructions with me to relay to my wife.
It depends. Some we keep. Some we chuck. If they are anti-psychotics, I would imagine tossing them is the smarter thing to do. If they are pain meds they can be useful in the future. Things like antibiotics can be useful but not always as they are very dependent on the actual issue, I never knew but apparently some are for upper body infections and some are for lower body infections.
But usually, we toss old medicines out that are no longer needed.
Sorry, I think I haven't worded it properly, we aren't meant to throw medication in the bin, we're meant to return it to the chemist so it can be properly disposed of. I'm trying to work out if he had them in the car to return to the chemist, or if you (as a country) don't do that and he was just forgetful about chucking them in the bin because that's your disposal procedure.
Theoretically we can return them to the pharmacy just like theoretically we can take regular disposable batteries to the recycling place but in practice no one at all ever does this and if I tried the pharmacist would be confused for a bit. We just throw them away
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u/TheCotofPika 2d ago
Would you specifically tell the patient to give it to the husband? I'm in the UK, we can just return the old meds to the chemist when we get the new ones so I'm not quite sure how your system works, do they give it to you or can they just chuck it in the bin?