Medical Information

Paperwork! I have been filling out paperwork for the past couple of weeks for Mayo. It appears that each dept. has their own paperwork they want filled out. So paperwork! I want to share a lesson that I learned the hard way. When my mom's health got to the point that she needed someone to go to the doctor with her I realized that her doctors NEVER talked to her other doctors. Instead of going through her records to find some piece of information they expected her to know. At that point I started taking notes at each appointment. I also asked for a list of the medications that she took so I would know if they were giving her something she wasn't supposed to take. I can't tell you how many times that information I had, kept her from having the wrong medication given to her or having to have blood work or medical tests redone. By the time my dad got sick I knew that I had to do the same thing. I am not saying that mistakes are made by the medical community often, I am just saying that you need to everything you can to make sure that NO mistakes are made. Shortly after that I put together my own medical notebook with the following information in it.
Demographic Information
List of doctors you see with address and phone number
List of medication (I use an Excel spreadsheet so it can be changed or updated as needed)
     Medication     Doctor prescribed med     Date started    Dated stopped    Reason why
 List of medication I am allergic to and what the reaction to the med was
 List of medical tests   Date done    Dr. ordered the test    Result of test 
 List of blood pressure   Pulse    Oxygen level    Date
 Weight   Date
 Paper for notes and questions
Section to add information given
Section about family medical history
I know this sounds crazy but when I go to the doctor they don't even refer to their computers with all of the information, they ask me for the information. God forbid you should ever have a serious medical issue, but if you do this notebook would be a valuable tool.

The lesson I have learned from the medical field is this, don't count on them knowing everything about you, take responsibility for your own medical needs and it could literally save your life. One of the women I work for just put her mother in a nursing home. The mother has all of her cognitive abilities and is very sharp. Before she went into the nursing home she had her doctor list all of the medications she was on and write down what each medication looked like. Last week one of the nurses took her the meds and there was a strange medication. She refused to take the medicine. The nurse got angry and said she was going to report her to the charge nurse. She told her that was fine and she was also going to report her to the charge nurse. Her mother took her list with the description to the charge nurse and proved that the nurse was wrong. The nursing home made her apologize to the mother. Who knows what the medication was they were trying to make her take and what ill effects it could have had.
Please take responsibility for your own health, you are your own best advocate!