CareNovateMag Shares Medication Literacy, Caregiving & Social Health Tips During Patient Safety Week

March 1, 2013 - PRLog -- In an effort to raise awareness and encourage the engagement of patients, families, caregivers, health care providers, and the public in safety with medications and health, CareNovateMag
[http://www.carenovatemag.com] has announced its participation in the 2013 Patient Safety Awareness Week campaign, Patient Safety 7/365.

Patient Safety Awareness Week is an annual education and awareness campaign for health care safety created in 2002 and led by the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF). 2013 Patient Safety Awareness Week theme, Patient Safety 7/365, highlights the need for everyone to understand the importance of focusing on patient safety all year round.

CareNovateMag will engage caregivers, parents, sandwich generation families, patients, and the community through social media, tweet chats and other educational and awareness-building activities specific to patient safety.

Below are 10 tips – on medication safety, fall prevention, public health and self-care for caregivers.
Medication Safety–

·         Communication  and education are key! An informed patient and caregivier  via the use of plain language and health literacy assessment with healthcare providers can lead to safe and appropriate medicine use – improved outcomes, and patient safety.
·         Encourage caregivers, patients, seniors by asking them open ended questions about their medications. If they do not know what to ask, CareNovateMag team has compiled a list of 10 questions patient and caregivers should ask prior to taking any medications? Refer to our 10 questions to ask before taking any medication (http://www.carenovatemag.com/10-ways-to-save-on-medications/).
·         Motivate caregivers and patients to take responsibility for learning about how to take your medication safely. The best way to do that is again to ask and discuss with your physician and/or pharmacist.
·         Tell your pharmacist all the medications and over-the-counter drugs you take – especially natural supplements, vitamins and herbal remedies purchased at health and grocery stores
·         Advice your patients to always seek out the expertise of their local pharmacist – studies have shown over and over that they are incredible resources to our healthcare system, yet they are still underutilized.
·         Ask you patient and caregivers where they buy their medications. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently launched BeSafeRx [http://www.carenovatemag.com/besaferx-learn-more-about-online-pharmacies-per-fda/],  a national campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of buying prescription medicines from fake online pharmacies. To learn more about this campaign, please click here (http://www.carenovatemag.com/besaferx-learn-more-about-on...)

Public & Social Health-

·         Hand Washing - Hand washing is easy to do and it’s one of the most effective ways to prevent the spread of many types of infection and illness in all settings—from your home and workplace to child care facilities and hospitals. Learn more here (http://www.carenovatemag.com/why-we-need-to-hand-wash/)

Fall Prevention -
·         To help older adults prevent slips, trips, and falls, ask your doctor or pharmacist to review your medicines—both prescription and over-the counter—to identify medicines that may cause side effects or interactions such as dizziness or drowsiness.
·         Have your eyes checked by an eye doctor at least once a year and update your eyeglasses to maximize your vision. Poor vision greatly increases your risk of falling. Consider getting a pair of glasses with single vision distance lenses for some activities such as walking outside

Self-Care For Caregivers -
·         Caregivers tend to care for everyone and everything and tend to neglect their health. In a 2009 survey by National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP, Caregiving in the U.S. 2009, 17% of caregivers reported feeling that their health had become worse because of caregiving.  We encourage caregivers to

·         Schedule your annual physical today or schedule on your birthday month.
·         Take care of myself more, mentally, physically and spiritually. It will make me a better caregiver.
·         Learn to seek, ask and accept HELP guilt free in order  to avoid illness, stress and burnout.
·         Appreciate life more and find humor & laughter in all situations. Laughter, like they say is the best medicine.

In addition to the daily blog posts, tweets and Facebook posts, CareNovateMag @Carerxpharmd staff will be joining a Twitter chat on Thursday, March 7, Noon – 1:00 pm Eastern time. The topic will focus on using simulation to teach opioid prescribing. Sponsored jointly by NPSF and the University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics. NPSF will be tweeting as @theNPSF, the UIC CERT will tweet as @UIC_CERT. Follow the hashtag #cert_opioids.


About CareNovateMag.com
CareNovateMag.com is an online platform, a go-to resource that provides timely, relevant caregiving information, social health and medication literacy content that are important to our core audience: family caregivers, patients, families, healthcare extenders, consumers, seniors and most of all WOMEN.  At CareNovateMag.com, an informed patient/caregiver, means improved health, literacy, patient safety, better health outcomes at reduced healthcare cost. In addition, CareNovateMag offers free newsletters (http://eepurl.com/n0KfD) [http://eepurl.com/vvgKT] that provide regular access to medication literacy, patient safety, social health, and emerging healthcare innovation insights.


About National Patient Safety Foundation
The National Patient Safety Foundation has been pursuing one mission since its founding in 1997 – to improve the safety of care provided to patients. As a central voice for patient safety, NPSF is committed to a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach in all that it does. NPSF is an independent, not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization.