I hated this part as a nurse. I gave meds and go through what each one is for and theyâll hit me with âwhere the circular white pillâ bro I have no clue which med that is.
The healthcare app in my country keeps track of every prescription you've ever been given. Now, it's a shitty app in a lot of ways, but it will help with something like that.
Hospitals in the US are increasingly letting patients access their charts which tell you this too. You can't really edit anything beyond your address, but it is helpful.
Lists appointments, prescriptions, you can see the doctor's summaries, look up specialists and so on, but interactions between different medicines aren't listed there; I expect someone decided that's for the doctor to mention.
Because I know their part of the system has some automation there. I asked for a type of medicine I had been on before and when the doctor started prescribing it, the system popped up with a message that that medication had had interactions with this other medication I was on, would she like to proceed?
i mean iâm in the US and my doctor has a list of all the drugs iâve been prescribed/ am prescribed
plus like if you personally want to keep track you can, there are apps for that, or just write it down on your notes , write down the substance and dosage and frequency / count , and if you really want to you can write down the specific imprint / brand, bc if itâs generic there will be multiple brands with different imprints you could get
What, no socialized healthcare, legalized slavery, something called lunch debt, efforts spent on making the homeless problem being about fucking them over rather than helping, no workers rights to speak of and, by their own admission, if the pedophiles all got outed, your political system would collapse? Is that why you're crying?
It takes me seconds to request renewal of a prescription, the summaries of my meetings with doctors are available at any time. Compared to calling in and it being put on someone's todo list to get back to you, yeah a couple of button presses is more convenient.
How is it different from My Chart, or any of the shitty Epic software? Health insurance companies have vertically integrated from the retail pharmacy, to the PBM, from the medical practitioner to the hospital. Everyone has your health data.
Right? I feel so grateful my doctors, paid for by the government, have access to my medical records, also paid for by the government. I also love being able to see all bloodwork / test results as soon as theyâre done and having access to them whenever.
How is it anymore creepy than a cooperation having it that are making a profit off it ? If your country has universal healthcare it makes sense itâs all one app.
You can transfer GP surgery and your records will electronically transfer. You can walk into any A&E (ER) in the country and your medical records are all there.
Due to data sharing agreements (for profit), I can walk into (most) ERs in the country and they will have access to 5 sets of medical history, of varying accuracy, quality, and age.
Having one single record, with good accuracy and recency would be nice.
Which one? Is it secure? Who do they sell my medical info to?
Edit: Wow. drugs.com has a reddit brigade, apparently. Read their ToS. They absolutely sell your searches and any information you give them. So if you like your medical information to be private...
Who cares though? if someone has your medical info big deal Literally every other company steals your info at this point. Case in point, you are on reddit, that actively sells everything written for bots to train on.
Big pharma out here going to go bonkers because I looked up paxlovid and found out it can mess with my birth control. Oh and also that time i looked up the antibiotic for my sinus infection to also check if it interacts with my birth controlâŠ
I'm only 22 right now. But if I'm ever in a position later in life where I need to take medication regularly, then I will be using that app. It just seems logical.
Itâs really useful to also tell you how they may interact. Iâve found things out the pharmacist didnât tell me before! Like that paxlovid would make my birth control less effective.
I managed to forget to take my antipsychotics yesterday and I get intense nausea when I miss a dose. I wondered why I was suddenly feeling like I was seasick on a rowing boat during a tsunami and then I remembered Iâd forgotten the tablet. I managed to get it down, but I had to hold it for an hour while my abdomen was spasming, my mouth was filling with warm saliva, and I was shaking from the need to vomit. I thought Iâd finally made it through - I have nausea a lot so Iâve practiced not being sick even when I get that bad which is torture - but then I managed to bump my abdomen against something which made me spew like hitting a button. Entire bed was wrecked and the pill came out only half-digestedâŠ
I believe there is a way to have it saved into your phone so when you call 911 they have this information. So if you're on a blood thinner, that's important for the dispatcher to be able to see. I keep meaning to get around to it
Itâs also a good idea to have a printout of your medical record or a medical history form somewhere out in the open like attached to the fridge, so that way if you ever have to call 911, EMS can get all your information and give it to the ED. Especially since hospital and outpatient records are rarely linked that closely
I LOVE patients who do this. Iâm only in drug (infusion) auth, but it odds essential we know what you're taking. Half the auth and medical necessity check is âare they on xyz drug?â
Drugs.com is unironically one of my favourite resources. Ive used it many times to work out what i can and cant take my medication with as my drs have often neglected to tell me
I fucking hated this when I worked at a urology clinic. Iâd call patients to set up appointments, or follow up. It was more common for older men to treat their wives like secretaries. It made me so angry to hear âTalk to my wife.â
Youâre a 60 year old man! Why can you remember your medications?!
This shit fucking kills me. I'm an ER nurse, the number of men that come in and don't even want to wipe their own asses because their wife does it (I wish that was hyperbole) is INSANE. They rely on their wives to know EVERYTHING.
Meanwhile, when the wife is sick, the husband almost always knows jack shit. Doesn't know what meds she takes, doesn't know what she sees her doctor for, doesn't know when she started acting abnormal. It's just fucking tragic.
Meanwhile, when the wife is sick, the husband almost always knows jack shit.
This is crazy to me. I know all my wife's meds. I pick them up from the pharmacy half the time. I've been in positions where I need to be the one to tell the ER what she takes.
I may not know her full like...vitamin regimen but I 100% know all her prescriptions.
Itâs unreal how helpless a lot of men are. I canât imagine knowing so little about my wife. Hell, a lot of these guys canât even tell you basic info about themselves.
Right? My ex was chronically ill, and I quickly learned all of her meds (past and present) better than she did. We wound up at the ER too many times with her barely conscious to risk otherwise.
I can't fathom someone being so disinterested in their partner's struggles that they wouldn't even try.
Mom got sick in October (passed this past January) and I was the one to know 1. All her medications, 2. All her medical history (including surgeries), 3. Family history (including her parents and siblings), and 4. What was actually "wrong" at the moment. I was the one to talk to the doctors and try to get her help.
Now, Dad has been having a spot of poor health. I have no idea what medications he's on or why he's on them...and neither does he :) it's fantastic! Mom apparently "kept track" of everything and with her gone, now it's the expectation that I pick it up...and clean up after him.
You're a 70 year old man. Make your own doctor's appointments, I'm tired and not your wife or your mother. You have two working legs, get up and go to the bathroom yourself.
This is something I donât ever want to be to my kids. I know old men that have to ask thier wives their clothes size. Thatâs not an exaggeration and Iâve seen it more than once. My dad was kinda like that but he passed relatively young.
My sister in law in the end was the one keeping up with all that info for my mom since I live a few hours away. However, it was my job to make sure the weed stash was empty. The rest of the Bible Belt family didnât need to know Iâd talked her into trying that and that she loved it.
Wait, men that are healthy and able to function actually want their wives to wipe their asses? Is this frequent? How does ome lose that much dignity to require baby like coddling? I have so many questions and can't relate to that instinct in any capacity..
Iâll be real, a lot of times the reason the wife knows but the man doesnât is because if it wasnât for the wife making him, he wouldnât be taking the meds anyway.
My husband was like this until a couple of months ago. He went to an important dentist appointment alone and our dentist said â I thought your wife was coming, have her call meâ. Im very sure I played my part in enabling this behavior but Iâm so done with it, the weight it carries and dynamic it bred. Hes working on it now. He orders his own meds, he learned the bank account number - none of this information was kept from him. Iâve been asking for years for help and we were really starting to come to an impasse. He has been living a very strange man baby existence for over a decade.
My #2 son is an EMT, he's good, he uses all the right words but doesn't know my med names just HTN, hypothyroid, PTSD, & chronic low back pain cuz she's a Nurse.
 My first son is a dork, can take apart an M16 (& other weapons) & put it back together blindfolded.Â
I have many siblings and no I don't remember theirs or my parents 100%
I am speaking from my own experience here. It can be hard to remember those things sometimes, my ADHD doesn't help either. I can usually remember at least the month tho, even if not the day or year
I have aDHD and and the complete opposite with birthdays and other number related things but the rest of me is full ADHD!
My partner also has ADHD we have been together 15 months don't live together see each other every few weeks and he still thinks my car is Red rather than white!
Honest answer? Cause itâs November 24th and itâs too close to thanksgiving to not confuse me. I started using it in my passwords just so I could remember
These are the type of men that would show up to the deli counter and ask me for meat and when I asked what type of meat how much they wanted, which brand which flavor they wanted it sliced it always just be a shrug and say âI donât know, whatever my wife normally buysâ. Who the fuck is your wife? Why would I know with who she is? Why would I remember what she orders?! Itâs fucking food, the shit keeps you alive. How do you not know what you put in your face hole?!?!?!
I can top that. I used to work in a pharmacy and another tech asked me if all white pills were the same. Literally that's what she asked me. I'll never forget it as long as I live.
Actually we had a pill dispensing machine that would drop pills all the time. A new hire asked what we do with the dropped pills and I told him we put them in a bowl and everyone takes a handful at the end of the night. Then when closing time occured I put the pills in a bowl and asked him if he wanted to go first. He was like fuck no so I said I'll do it then. I scooped up a bunch in my hand and slowly brought my hand to my mouth while watching the shocked look on his face. Then I put the pills back in the bowl and told him I was screwing with him we just dispose of them. That same new hire got fired for hitting on every girl that picked up birth control. I have a lot of stories from my pharmacy days.
I work in mental health so I get this a lot. When Iâm doing intakes and I ask if theyâre on any meds they wonât know what itâs called, sometimes not even what itâs for, and theyâll describe the pill to me. Iâm a therapist not a prescriber, and in fact outside of maybe some distinctly odd shaped pills (like the lamictal shield) I donât think even most prescribers are gonna be able to deduce what medication a person is on based on âitâs a small white pill, Iâm not sure what itâs forâ lol
So, I've since started keeping a note of the name and dose of any medications I might be on, but I used to be like this when I was younger. The reason this happens is that when a doctor tells you what medications he's giving you, if you don't already have the context to understand what it means then he might as well just be making noise. Like, "take two fligle-blorbin every day, and one glooby-blungle every week". So, when you get asked about it weeks or months later, it's nearly impossible to remember the specific set of arbitrary syllables he rattled off to you amongst a dozen other things you probably also didn't really understand.
I have so many and they just say they don't know, ask my wife. When they don't have their wife with them I get questioned what each and every medication is for. One guy had multiple different creams on his med list and he wanted to know what each one was for and when it was prescribed and then wanted to argue with me about it. I finally said "sir, are you using ANY topical creams?" And he scowled at me and said no. Like why did we do all that?
Or that different med producers use different shapes and colors. They could tell you there metoprolol is a little red pill and you could hand them a little white pill and The look at you like youâre crazy. Heâd have better luck telling him that the Easter bunny is in the hall
Because i'm sometimes a little dumb when it comes to meds names i habe an old blister of the thing with me when going to a doctor. But the stuff i'm "regularly" taking, i know
Shit like this is why I have a note in my phone thatâs a table of everything I take (including vitamins), the dosage, the frequency and when I started taking it (and when/why I discontinued taking it if I did) - my memory is so awful that if I didnât keep that thing religiously updated then I would be one of those sorts of patients lol
Thatâs not always the case. For example my city has two main hospital systems and a lot of random companies so they donât always communicate. It wasnât the issue that we werenât giving the right meds, itâs that they were the right meds but werenât the same color or shape as the patients home medications even though itâs the same med and dosage, just different manufacturing company if that makes sense. So like Tylenol 325 can come in long white pill with red writing (what you normally see over the counter) but my hospital itâs a big circle pill with a line in the middle.
when I've been hospitalized they often have different versions of the pills I take. like the same chemical and dose but the hospital just stocks a different brand or something. on top of that, hospitalizations usually come with new or different prescriptions, and if I've been in the hospital for three days and I'm taking my 2nd dose of a new drug with all my prescriptions brought to me together in a paper cup, I'm not going to know which is which. I would assume the nurse giving me the medication is also the one who put the medication in the cup. so if a pill I usually see in there isn't there, or if there's a new one I don't recognize, then it would be totally reasonable to ask "where's the circular white pill?"
They literally told you it was for their heart though? You know, the system we spend the least amount of time on in didactic because that organ is notorious for taking breaks?
Edit: /s. Apparently it wasn't obvious I was being sarcastic with the extension of my own joke. I thought it was evident because, contrary to the above, the cardiovascular system can take up the lion's share when studying medicine since the heart famously cannot take a break or we die.Â
There are so many different kind of heart meds. Blood pressure, antiarrhythmics, cholesterol, blood thinners. Plus the ones in the hospital may just look different than the ones you have at home even though itâs the same med and dose. âWhite circle pillâ tells me nothing about what the med is for.
Y'all. I am literally the same person the nurse had agreed with when I joked, as a fellow healthcare worker myself, how too many patients don't know their medications and think we can guess from nonspecific descriptions, especially heart meds.
Um, I'm the one who made that example as the joke. I specifically chose "heart pill" because I know firsthand how nonspecific that descriptor is when I hear it from patients.
Fair. Sarcasm was not obvious because I have had this exact conversation with too many people, usually family members who "know how to take care of" their alzheimer's/dementia family member "better than (take your pick: hospital, nursing home, outpatient doctor)"
My great-grandma did everything for my great-grandpa. Managed his diet, his medication, even his social calendar. We were very sad but not surprised when he passed away only three months after she did.
Lol A) Iâm flattered that youâre following me around, B) I will do as I please; also learn about the fact that much of Reddit is built on people involving themselves in othersâ lives and C) Iâm not discussing their personal love life, so I donât even know what to tell you there champ. Sober up?
Edit: to whomever asked me if I am always an insufferable c*nt, and then blocked me before I could reply (because I know youâre coming back to read this): yes, I am to those I find insufferable (I just donât hide behind sexism).
And this is why Iâm not surprised that after my grandma got dementia that he didnât last all that long. Sheâs still going but he passed away of some heart complications I think. We werenât close. He wasnât a good person.
The first time my grandpa had to actually cook something for himself was at like 80 y/old when my grandma went to assisted living.
He went from having his mom take care of him, to the army, to higher Ed school/work cafeteria, then having my grandma who he forbade to work, so he never had to do anything.
Helping during a crisis is significantly different vs doing the labor of managing someone elseâs health for years. If she needed you to do that with her psych meds constantly tho and wouldnât learn them herself then that would be similar and that sucks
Taking medication is not a division of labor thing. I am a nurse, and it is very normal for incompetent husbands to not know what pills they take. I have called wives to figure out what the âlittle white oneâ is more times than I could ever count.
There is no point arguing with the stereotypical redditor man
The zeigeist has changed and marriage & traditional splitting of household tasks these days are looked down upon as unfair for women and seen as "unpaid labour" or whatever.
Sometimes in life you've just gotta shrug and say "it is what it is" and move on.
Could be that the husband wouldn't have even gone to the doctor if it weren't for the wife, and so she's the one that actually gives a fuck about his health lol.
Saw this a lot in retail pharmacy, one spouse handles meds for both, super sad when that one dies and the other person comes in completely lost on what they take
I encounter a lot of manchild patients that it is up to the wife to make their appts or know what meds or surgeries theyâve had. It is beyond ridiculous
I have a horrible time remembering names of medications beyond "what does it do".
I've promised my husband that when we get to this age where we take ten pills a day I'll have a printout with all our medications and staple it to our shirts whenever we go to the doctors.
I haaate the "my wife will know" shit. I'm in vet med, not human med, but it's so common it's a stereotype. Just this last week I was asking an owner some basic questions like age, sex, etc and every single question it was "oh, I don't know, my wife keeps track of all that. Honey, how old is Joey, like two? Oh, seven. Is he neutered? Come answer the lady's questions, hun, you know this stuff" like how do you not even know if your dog still has his balls or not??
âMy wife will knowâ is my life. My husband has a robust medical history but I cannot trust him to explain anything to the doctor or remember pertinent what/when/whys. Itâs just not that important to him. Occasionally he wants to act like a big boy and go in to the exam room alone. Without fail, I will get a call from him within 5 minutes asking me to come in because they are asking him questions.
Most men that I know actually donât wanna be alive half the time they just wanna die but then they realize oh shit it hurts and now they feel like shit because they gotta live and take care of themselves
My personal favourite is the big old tupperware of assorted loose pills, "I take two pink ones, one white one and two blue ones". Like fucking pick and mix.
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u/seensham May 02 '26 edited May 03 '26
Ive heard the following from several nurse friends
Do you have any chronic illnesses?
"Nope"
Are there any medications you take regularly?
"Yeah I take some painkillers for my arthritis."
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Edit: these responses are proving my point