MANAGING YOUR MEDICATIONS

One of the most important parts of participating in your treatment is remembering to take your medication as prescribed. You should contact your doctor if you are unable to take all the medications as prescribed in order to discuss appropriate adjustments. Understanding that managing mediations can get difficult if you aren’t feeling well or are juggling multiple prescriptions, these websites offer tools to help you with this all-important task:

AARP has information on asking the right questions of your doctor and pharmacist and how to get the most from your medications. They also provide a printable “Make the Most of Your Meds” toolkit.

The American Heart Association provides information on managing your medications specific to heart disease, including information on heart medicines, a tool to track your medications online, a printable medication tracker and information on medicine assistance programs.

Everyday Health provides “How to Manage Your Prescription Medications”, which 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.

MedlinePlus, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine offers information about prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines, and herbs and supplements. Side effects, dosage, special precautions, dietary restrictions, storage and more information are available.

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.

The nonprofit National Consumers League (NCL) and partners have launched Script Your Future with resources to help manage your medications.

RxVitality makes “intelligent” pill bottles that use lights and sounds to remind you to take your pill.

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.

USA.gov has a Prescription Drugs website to look up drug interactions, see pictures of prescription medications, and get information about drug coverage.

How and Where Do I Dispose Unused Medications?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration provides detailed information on how to dispose of unused medicine, precautions to take and environmental concerns of medication disposal.

The Medicine Abuse Project, part of The Partnership at DrugFree.org, offers information on disposal sites and links to search for disposal sites by your zip code.

Resources updated January 2016