Stupidity? Or Sadism?

[xela]

Does it just not occur to people to think about their customers? To imagine themselves in their customers' shoes?

I am well into the top percentile of general health and motor function for recovering stroke patients. Indeed, my motor control is essentially normal. And every single time I fill my pillboxes, I drop at least one dipyridamole on the floor. A drug the vast majority of whose recipients are recovering stroke patients, most of whom have serious motor control challenges &mdash which is delivered in the form of a pill less than half the size of a childrens' aspirin. What the fuck were they thinking? Is this some cruel joke?

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[Edit 2008-10-12: changed from public to friendslocked.]

Comments

[siderea]

Don't a lot of stroke patients have trouble swallowing? If so, pehaps it's a feature for them.

[n5red.livejournal.com]

Good point. That would be irritating. Have you considered large tweezers?

[awfief.livejournal.com]

folks with serious motor control challenges don't often live by themselves and fill their own pill boxes.

I think it's less stupidity or sadism and more "there's no business reason to make it better". Heck, they could have the delivery mechanism be like this:

http://www.equal.com/products/product_detail/tablets.html

where you push a button and one tablet comes out. (seriously, why in hell do we have this for fake sugar and have it NOT be mandatory for every single prescription?!?!)

I know you have several pills you take, but if that's the only one that bothers you, most pharmacies will blister package any prescription you want. It might be easier to push through the backing to get the pill at the time you need it?

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating. And a good question. I suspect in part because the box would have to go through FDA medical device approval. (A pill bottle is a pill bottle, but if you're going to claim to deliver a measured dose at the push of a button, your mechanism better reliably deliver one measured dose.) Hopefully they're trying.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

perhaps....could also be that they cost more....and then of course there's the childproofing issue.

but I do feel smart that I came up with that. :)

[darlene-ford.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've noticed that doctors just don't think about drug delivery issues; that's the pharmacist's problem. Meanwhile the pharmacists at big chain drug stores just do the cheapest way to fill the prescription. It might be worth talking to your pharmacist to see if he has a better solution...

Thinking about this - I can usually pour exactly one tablet out of my original pill bottles. Getting the teensy tablet in and out of the pill box sounds like the hard part of the problem. Have you considered using a funnel? Or a differently sized/shaped pill box? This doesn't solve the root problem of big-pharma-stupid-about-drug-delivery, but it might keep your tablets off the floor.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

I'm not trying to get them one at a time out of the box: on the box, each day I open the appropriate compartment, dump its contents into my hand, and take them all at once. It's trying to get them from the bottle to the box. And in fact my clever plan to use a funnel to help contributed to the pills getting dropped.