Over-the-counter medicines⁶

If a customer’s symptoms persist after trying diet and lifestyle advice, there are over-the-counter products that you can recommend. These differ depending on the symptom.

• Constipation – a bulk-forming laxative such as ispaghula
• Diarrhoea – an antimotility medicine such as loperamide. The aim of treatment with a laxative or antimotility medicine is to produce a comfortable, regular, soft, well-formed stool
• Abdominal pain or cramps – for customers with confirmed IBS, an antispasmodic medicine such as mebeverine hydrochloride, alverine citrate or peppermint oil can be taken when needed.

Person-centred care 

As we have seen, IBS is a lifelong condition and individual customers will experience different symptoms and triggers. It is therefore vital that you practise person-centred care. Person-centred care means treating every person as an individual and with compassion, dignity and empathy.

TIP

When providing diet and lifestyle advice, aim to give customers a range of options for things they could try so they can make their own decision, rather than telling them what they should do. For example, you could say: ‘Some things that might help improve your symptoms are…’