I work at a local Urgent Care, performing intake and triage on patients. Needless to say, it's pretty harrowing right now. Mom lives at home with her caregiver, Tamri, who is taking wonderful care of her. They both don't fully understand why I can't be there hanging out constantly with them right now, as I usually do. Anyway, yesterday I called all of Mom's doctors and got early refills on her Rxs so that I could stock up her daily pill boxes. I'm terrified that I am going to get sick and and either 1. not be able to set up her medications, and 2. infect Mom and her caregiver. I am going to go over tomorrow and set up two weeks of pills. My concern (and obsession) is how to do it completely safely. I wear a mask and gloves when going in, and will bring the med box outside to the little patio. I plan on doing the meds out there but my mind is circling as to how to not contaminate the pills... if I open the bottles with gloves on, do I change the gloves before I actually touch the pills and put them in the containers, etc. Some of the pills need to be split, there are so many bottles..... ugh. I feel myself focusing on this and I know that when I come home I will run over ever step I took and realize I did something wrong. Same with the groceries I bring. Her caregiver can't do the pills, she is Georgian and doesn't read English, and now's not the time to be teaching her anyway... and I have no one else that can do it, they are all home isolating themselves. This has been keeping me up at night and any advice would be so appreciated.
Then you just drop it off outside. No need to enter the house at all. You can wipe it down with sanitizer before you leave.
Best wishes to you.
But - are your local pharmacies not set up to deliver blister packs? It sounds like a co-ordination job, getting ALL of the doctors to send the px's electronically to ONE pharmacy who should, I'd have thought, be able to handle this for you.
I'm actually not a big fan of blister packs, but only when the elder lives alone - with a good conscientious caregiver on the premises they should do the job nicely.