How to Create a Pill Card

How to Create a Pill Card

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This guide was designed to help users create an easy-to-use "pill card" for patients, parents, or anyone who has a hard time keeping track of their medicines. Step-by-step instructions, sample clip art, and suggestions for design and use will help to customize a reminder card.

To create your own pill card, download the Word File (800 KB; Word Viewer / http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/pillcard/pillcard.doc). Follow the directions to create and use your personalized pill card.

Select to download print version (PDF File, 290 KB / http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/pillcard/pillcard.pdf). PDF Help.

Go to the Pharmacy Health Literacy Center for both technical assistance and information on related AHRQ tools.


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Contents
How to Create a Pill Card
Why Create a Pill Card?
What You Will Need to Create a Pill Card
Getting Ready to Create a Personalized Pill Card
Creating a Personalized Pill Card
Using a Personalized Pill Card
Pill Card Template
Common Pill Shapes
Common Images for Medication Uses
Acknowledgment and Disclaimer

How to Create a Pill Card
Use this guide to find out how you can create an easy-to-use "pill card" for your patients, parents, or anyone you know who has a hard time keeping track of their medicines.



Why Create a Pill Card?
Many people have trouble keeping track of their medicines. A pill card is a simple, visual way to show all of the medicines that a person needs to take on a regular basis. Medicines taken "as needed" should not be included on the pill card since they do not follow a regular daily schedule. The pill card uses pictures and simple phrases to show each medicine, its purpose, how much to take, and when to take it. It is easier to understand than the complicated information and instructions that typically come with medicines.

This guide provides step-by-step instructions for creating a pill card for a pretend patient, Sarah, who takes simvastatin, furosemide, and insulin.



What You Will Need to Create a Pill Card:
A computer with word processing software.
A color printer (Note: the pill card may also be printed on a black and white printer and colored in by hand after printing).
Information for all of the medicines that you wish to include on the pill card.
The actual medicines that you wish to include on the pill card.
Return to Contents

Getting Ready to Create a Personalized Pill Card
Before we start to create the actual card, we need to organize the medicine information that we want to include on the card and find pictures to represent the information.

We will create a table to organize all of the information. This table includes:

The name of each medicine.
How much of each medicine (the dose) and what it does, which can be found on the package insert or bottle label.
Suggestions for ways to show this information using pictures.
Use this table as a guide to create your own outline of the information that you want to include on the card for each medicine. The template provided includes pictures to represent four different times of day that medicine may need to be taken—morning, afternoon, evening, and night/bedtime. You will also need to find pictures to represent what each medicine is used for (e.g., a blood pressure cuff to represent high blood pressure). You may use the pictures in this guide, if appropriate. It may be helpful to consult the doctor or pharmacist to determine each medication's purpose.

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How to Create a Pill Card