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Table 4 Concerns over long-term and multiple medication use

From: Medication beliefs among patients with inflammatory bowel disease who report low quality of life: a qualitative study

"I keep looking at myself and thinking I am on blood pressure tablets, cholesterol tablets, beta-blockers, pain killers for your heart. I take something like nineteen tablets a day and think to myself Jesus, if I go to the doctors to see him about anything else I'll have even more tablets. I don't want more tablets, I want less tablets. And I keep thinking to myself I'll go to the doctors and say "look are you sure these tablets are doing me any good? Isn't one counteracting one which is counteracting another, can't you cut them down?" (male with ulcerative colitis, 55 years)

"I've reached saturation level as far as drug therapies are concerned and the consequence of that is that I'm developing other problems." (male with ulcerative colitis, 65 years)

"They fight with each other these tablets as they are going down.. I take 2 sleeping tablets; I take my paracetamol, my codeine, my folic acid and my prednisolone. It's a wonder you don't OD really, all these tablets." (female with crohn's disease, 58 years)