Importance of Medications List

Why do we ask you to keep an up to date list of your medications? Because you are the one source of the most accurate information. At your office visit, you and your practitioner may have to collaborate in complex treatment decisions. If our understanding of what you take happens to be out of date or just wrong, then the advice you get can be off target.

Your medication list can’t be found online. Yes, it might be possible for our practice to get a list of active prescriptions from your pharmacy. But it is not uncommon that one of your doctors could tell you to stop taking a medication before the prescription expires. Or the instructions might have changed so what you take is different from what the pharmacy has recorded. Or the prescription was written without much detail and you were given separate instructions that don’t show up at the pharmacy. That last situation is not uncommon for Parkinson disease, for example.

But what about getting the list from your primary doctor’s office? Isn’t that good enough? Maybe. It depends on how accurate their recording and updating process is, and omissions and errors can still get through. It’s subject to the same kind of problems that the pharmacy list is. It all boils down to this: you are the best keeper of this information.

You should maintain a list with every medication, with the following information:

• Full name of the medication (generic or brand name OK), check spelling from bottle.
• How many mg in each pill (find this on the bottle).
• How may pills you take at a time, at what times of day.

If you have never done this, you can start right now as soon as you read this article. Once you have a list, update it every time there is a change, right away, before you forget. Some people do this by hand. If you (or a family member) are handy with a computer, it makes updates easier.

Carry the list on your person, always. It’s not just for your visits at our office. It’s for all your doctors. And if you ever need to be taken to the hospital, the squad and the ER personnel will have something accurate to go on. You are doing something to help all practitioners give you the best care possible.