Caregiver guide
A printable medication list template
Somebody will ask you for this list at every appointment, every pharmacy counter and every hospital admission — usually at the worst possible moment. Here is a blank template to print and fill in, and what a genuinely useful entry looks like.
famhlth.com/guides/medication-list-template
Why keep your own copy
It is reasonable to assume the doctor’s office already has this. Often they don’t. A chart only updates when a human types into it, so the list on file tends to lag behind reality — a specialist changed a dose, a hospital stopped something on discharge, a prescription lapsed and nobody closed the loop.
Your own list is the only one that reflects what the person is actually taking today. In a real emergency, when they can’t answer questions themselves, it becomes the most valuable piece of paper in your bag.
What every entry needs
Six fields. Fewer than six and someone has to phone you to fill the gaps.
- Drug name — brand and generic. People say “Lipitor,” the label says “atorvastatin,” and a pharmacist needs to know these are the same thing.
- Strength and dose. Not “a blood pressure pill” but “20 mg, one tablet.” Strength and number of tablets are different facts and both matter.
- When it’s taken. Time of day, and with or without food. “Twice daily” and “morning and bedtime” can mean different things in practice.
- What it’s for. In plain words — cholesterol, thyroid, reflux.
- Who prescribed it. When a question arises about one drug, this tells you who to call.
- When they started. Roughly is fine. A new symptom three weeks after a new drug is a pattern worth being able to see.
The template
Print this, fill it in by hand, and keep it in the folder that travels to appointments. Write in pencil — doses change.
| Medication (brand / generic) | Dose | When | What it’s for | Prescriber | Started |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Allergies and past reactions
Keep this on the same sheet. “Allergic to penicillin” and “felt nauseous on penicillin once in 1998” lead to very different decisions, so write down what actually happened.
| Drug or substance | What happened | When |
|---|---|---|
Pharmacy and prescriber contacts
| Name | Role or specialty | Phone |
|---|---|---|
To print the template: press ⌘ P on a Mac or Ctrl P on Windows. Navigation, links and this note are removed automatically — you’ll get the tables and headings only.
The medications people leave off
Ask someone what they take and they’ll list prescriptions. The omissions are predictable, and they are disproportionately the cause of interactions, because nobody thinks of them as drugs:
- Over-the-counter painkillers — especially ibuprofen and aspirin, which matter a great deal alongside blood thinners
- Vitamins, minerals and supplements, including fish oil and calcium
- Herbal remedies — St John’s wort in particular interferes with a long list of prescriptions
- Eye drops, ear drops, nasal sprays and inhalers
- Creams, gels and patches, which are absorbed and count
- “As needed” medication — sleeping tablets, laxatives, antacids, anything taken only occasionally
- Anything prescribed by a different doctor that they might not think is relevant to this one
A quicker way to build the first list
Rather than working from memory, gather every bottle, box, tube and blister pack in the house onto the kitchen table — including the bathroom cabinet and the bedside drawer — and work through the pile. It takes about twenty minutes once, and it consistently surfaces two or three things nobody would have remembered.
When to update it
Where the list needs to go
Keep a copy in the appointment folder, one on the fridge where paramedics will look for it, one in the wallet of whoever is most likely to be present in an emergency, and one on your phone. Paper is reliable right up until it’s at home on the counter.
The version that’s always current
The trouble with a printed list is that it’s out of date the moment a dose changes. FAMHLTH keeps medications, supplements, allergies and conditions for each family member on your phone, and exports a clean summary whenever you need to hand one over. Free, no ads or subscriptions, and the data never leaves your device.
FAMHLTH publishes these guides as organizational tools for caregivers. They are not medical advice, and they don’t replace the instructions of your care team — always follow what your clinicians tell you.