Our story

Fiona has been talking about medicines since… well a long time ago. Throughout her career, spanning from community pharmacist to clinical specialist, she has learned that patients regularly find information about medicines complex and hard to remember.

Her solution was to start drawing pictures and writing short notes to help explain what had been discussed. It seemed to work – there were light bulb moments and looks of relief as people grasped what they hadn’t understood before.

Naturally, this method evolved to the ‘whiteboard’ phase. Whether it was running Cardiac Rehabilitation sessions (during her time as the Cardiology Specialist Pharmacist at Waikato Hospital) or voluntarily hosting educational talks in her local community of Raglan, Fiona found it was incredibly useful to explain things visually. These whiteboard drawings were never complex pieces of art, or even anatomically exact, but they helped provide an understanding of how medicines work, when they are needed and why it is important to take them correctly. Again, light bulb moments were occurring and people were truly thankful to be able to wrap their heads around their medications.

Many whiteboard pens later, Fiona decided that it was time for her ‘drawings’ to become animations and with that the first Talking About Medicines video series was created. The goal was simple, to make this style of teaching accessible to all. The drawings may be a little more polished than the original scribbles but the concept of simple, visual communication remains constant. Still wondering what we’re talking about? Check out our videos here or meet the team behind Talking about Medicines below.