Organization is key for a well functioning life, especially so if you have multiple medical conditions. Odds are that you use some form of medication, supplement, and/or herbs to help manage the symptoms of your condition(s). Keeping track of all of these is quite a job. Physicians usually only have access at best to partial information from your primary pharmacy. Therefore its abundantly important that you be well prepared and organized to best help manage your care and prevent mistakes that can jeopardize your safety; I would like to help with that.
Though simple the following PDF is an excellent and direct way to communicate your medication, supplement, and herbal therapy usage to a variety of health care workers. For your convenience this document can be type filled using Adobe Reader Free or printed blank and hand written. Don’t be concerned by highlighted areas they will not show upon printing whether you choose to type fill or not.
Printable Interactive Medication Log
This document is prearranged into three clearly defined categories, each with twelve vacant lines to record the name of your medication, dose, and frequency. In my experience having each category separate prevents the reader from skimming the text potentially missing important interactions/information. If the above link does not automatically direct you to Adobe Reader you will need to select the download icon (the graphic of a document with the corner turned down and an arrow pointing downward in the center) from the upper right hand corner of the screen. From there you can select to either view the document in Adobe Reader or download for later use.
If you wish to create your own form compatible for type fill this document was created using PDF Escape Free (no affiliation). Simple to use, though a bit tedious, it accomplishes the task without an Adobe Acrobat DC monthly subscription fee.
If you wish to use shorthand when recording your medications please make use of the following standard medical terminology.
- QD = Once A Day, BID = Twice A Day, TID = Three Times A Day, QID = Four Times A Day
- QHS = Before Bed, Q4H = Every 4 Hours, Q6H = Every 6 Hours, Q8H = Every 8 Hours, QOD = Every Other Day, PRN = As Needed
- AC = Before Meal, PC = After Meal
- PO = Orally Administered, IM = Intramuscular Injection, SUBQ = Subcutaneous Injection, IV = Intravenously Administered, OD = Administered To The Right Eye, OS = Administered To The Left Eye, OU = Administered To Both Eyes
Once complete don’t forget to upload to a private cloud service such as Google Drive as well as your Patient Portal so you or your medical team have easy access in the event the printed copy is misplaced.