Participate in your Treatment
With health care technology and advances in science being made every day, more and more of the responsibility of delivering care falls on us — the patient and our caregivers. To fully benefit from these advances, we have to learn about the prescriptions we take, the medical devices we employ, and the risks associated with each of them. The following resources will help you participate more actively and knowledgably in your treatment.
Understanding Your Medications
About.com published an article, "Understanding What Your Doctor Writes on a Prescription." Simply understanding your prescription label can help you prevent medical errors. This article explains some common prescription abbreviations and offers simple steps you can take to ensure you get the correct medicine.
http://healthinsurance.about.com/od/prescriptiondrugs/a/understanding_MD_Rx.htm
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality offers simple tips everyone can take to make sure they receive the appropriate prescription medications and use them properly. http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/cc/cc010208.htm and offers this checklist to use when talking with your doctor about multiple medications.
http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/checkmeds.htm
ConsumerMedSafety.org is a nonprofit organization of pharmacists, nurses, and doctors devoted entirely to safe medication practices.
http://www.consumermedsafety.org/default.asp
The Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection has made a pamphlet title Protecting Yourself from Prescription Errors available online.
http://www.ct.gov/dcp/lib/dcp/drug_control/pmp/pdf/prescriptionerrors.pdf
Parent to Parent of NY State made a checklist of things to ask your doctor when receiving a new prescription for someone in your family:
http://www.parenttoparentnys.org/Family2Family/Tips%20Sheets/Medical%20Prescriptions%20Tips%200905.pdf
The National Council on Patient Information and Education informs the general public and health care professionals on safe medicine use. Their site Educate before You Medicate is full of information to help you understand your medications.
http://www.talkaboutrx.org
Specific tools from NCPIE for Consumers are here:
http://www.talkaboutrx.org/med_users_tools.jsp
Managing Your Medications
Everyday Health provides broad health information. This article, "How to Manage Your Prescription Medications" offers techniques and reminders to help people manage taking multiple medications and avoid adverse drug interactions. It also includes ways to reduce the cost of certain medicines.
http://www.everydayhealth.com/senior-health/managing-your-prescription-medication.aspx
MyMedSchedule is a free service that allows you to manage your meds online, set-up text message reminders and print out checklists that you can take to doctor appointments or the pharmacy.
http://www.mymedschedule.com/
SURVEYOR Health offers a personalized drug assessment tool designed to show users not only drug-drug interactions but the much more common and often dangerous adverse drug side effects.
http://www.surveyorhealth.com/
RxVitality makes "intelligent" pill bottles that use lights and sounds to remind you to take your pill.
http://rxvitality.com
Following Your Treatment Plan
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has a resource that can help you through the process of deciding on a treatment plan with your physician since patients are more likely to stick to a treatment plan when they've discussed options and chosen an option that suits their lifestyle.
http://www.ahrq.gov/CONSUMER/diaginf6.htm
Treatment plans and guidance for specific conditions can be researched by doing an online search using these terms: Follow a Treatment Plan with your Doctor.
Tests to Help Monitor Your Condition
If you have a chronic illness, like diabetes or heart disease, you might frequently have tests, like blood tests, to make sure that your treatment plan is working. It is also equally important for you to be able to understand what the test results mean. Preventative care and understanding follow-up results are both required for successfully monitoring your disease. The following links can assist you in keeping track of your particular condition:
Lab Tests Online is a site developed by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. If you're having trouble understanding your lab results, check out this article, "Understanding Your Tests." It explains testing methods, test preparation, and how to interpret various aspects of the report such as reference ranges.
http://www.labtestsonline.org/understanding/
Cigna, an insurance company, hosts a Healthwise article, "Understanding Lab Test Results" that provides answers to commonly asked questions like "Why are tests done?", "What do the units of measurement mean?", "What affects the test results?", and many others.
http://www.cigna.com/healthinfo/zp3409.html
The Merck Manuals Online Medical Library has a list explaining common medical tests.
http://www.merckmanuals.com/home/appendixes/ap2/ap2a.html?WT.z_resource=Common%20Medical%20Tests
Wellness Information Zone provides health information in everyday language about tests.
http://www.wellzone.org/test.aspx
WebMD has a list of relevant health tests with hyperlinks to pages explaining them.
http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/tests/default.htm
Outcome Tracker is a web-based system to monitor depression and anxiety.
http://www.outcometracker.org/
The Patient Health Questionnaire-9 is a quick test to monitor symptoms of depression:
http://patienteducation.stanford.edu/research/phq.pdf
Updated: September 2011
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