The Prepared Caregiver: Stories about Caregiving

Medication Notebook

Story Board Jane and Doug had a big challenge when she came home from the hospital and a stay in a nursing home. She was taking about a dozen medicines.

Getting the medication amount and timing just right was daunting for Doug, now her primary caregiver. He knew how important it was to get the medicines right, but had a hard time figuring out how to do that.

I sat down with Doug and together we developed a series of medication charts. The information we needed for each chart came from the prescription labels and the medications themselves. Doug thought it would be easiest for him if we organized the medicines by when Jane needed to take them. So we made separate charts for breakfast, lunch, afternoon, dinner and bedtime.

For each medicine we included this:

its name
what it was for (sleep, infection, etc.)
the dosage amount
the medicine's form (tablet, capsule, suppository, etc.)
when to give it and how (with a glass of water, with food, etc.).

Best of all, we included a sample of each medication so Doug could see exactly what he was to give.

We ended up with a five-page medication notebook, one page for each time of day when Jane was to get medication. We put the pages in plastic liners in a notebook so they'd stay organized. It was also very easy to take the notebook along to every doctor appointment. Whenever Jane's medications changed, we just changed the chart in the notebook, too.

With this help Doug was always able to give Jane the right medicines at just the right time. This was a big help for them both, and it was great to see them both confident that medications were on track. Something that was frightening at first turned out to be easy.

Kathy