Office Hours: Take charge of your health – Office templates can help

(The Office Hours blog is conceived and written by Microsoft employees -- for the times when only insider information will do.)

The templates linked in this blog might help to save your life — or at least help to eliminate complications — especially in emergency situations. When I started treatment for the blood clots I developed after having knee surgery, I was told that I should always have a list of medications and vitamins or supplements that I am taking with me. This way if I can’t tell the doctors what medications or vitamins I am taking, they can at least have the list, especially now that I am on blood thinners.

I was told to put the list in my wallet, preferably right behind my driver’s license, because my wallet is one of the first places emergency personnel look to see who I am and who my emergency contact is when I can’t speak for myself.

As a result, I created a Track Medicines and Vitamins template that you can use as a starting point for your list. I made the template about the size of a credit card that you can cut out and trifold (fold in thirds) to fit behind your driver’s license or other form of identification.

I was also told that I should make sure that my emergency contact has this list and the medical history for my family, because the family medical history can help to decide how best to treat me. As a result, I created a template for tracking family history. This template is a good starting point, but you might also want to check with your doctor to see what other information you should add.

Besides keeping a copy in my wallet and with my emergency contact, I also put the Word documents on my Mobile Device. If you have a Mobile device that uses Windows Mobile, you can do this too. Windows Mobile 5.0 and later supports the .docx file format introduced in Word 2007, and for Windows Mobile earlier than 5.0, you need to save the file in .doc file format (Word 2003 and earlier). You can also copy the documents to a thumb drive if you carry one of these devices.

-- Darla

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