Always
wash your hands before using your eye drop bottles.
Eye
drop dispensers are for individual use. They are personal items which shouldn’t
be shared between patients to avoid any contamination.
Wash
your dispenser regularly in warm soapy water.
To
avoid contamination, never touch the nozzle of the dropper bottle and avoid
contact with the eye.
After
putting in a drop, close your eye gently and press softly on the inside corner
with a finger for one or two minutes. Then wait five minutes, or according to
medical advice, before instilling any further drop, to prevent the first being
washed away.
Never
use drops after the expiry date printed on the packaging. Discard a bottle of
eye drops four weeks after opening and start a new one. Single dose
preservative-free phials should be used once only and discarded.
Hand
in any unused or expired medicines to your local pharmacist.
If
you use soft contact lenses, remove them before instilling eye drops and wait
at least 15 minutes before re-inserting them.
Store
eye drops and all medicines out of the reach and sight of children and out of
direct sunlight.
Keep
eye drops in the door of the refrigerator (not the freezer) so you can feel
them go into your eye more easily (but check the information leaflet or ask
your pharmacist to find out whether your drops can be stored in the
refrigerator).
If you sometimes forget your medication:
Create
a chart with the days of the week so that each drop can be ticked off.
Establish
a routine and stick to it. For example, it might help to put your drops by your
toothbrush so that you remember to put them in after you brush your teeth.
If you use more than one kind of drop:
Use
drops in the same order each time, for example by colour or by bottle size, to
reduce the possibility of making a mistake.
If
you have difficulty telling the different bottles apart, use elastic bands
around the bottles to distinguish them.
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