Free printable medication list

Six columns: Medication, Dose, When and how often, Reason, Prescriber, and Notes. A worked example sits in grey above eighteen blank rows, marked as an example so nobody mistakes it for a real entry. Across the top there's room for a name, a date of birth, the pharmacy and its phone number, drug allergies, and the date and name of whoever last checked it.

The Reason and Prescriber columns matter most. A pharmacist checking a list needs to know whose office to call when an instruction doesn't match the label, and a new specialist reads the reason column to see whether a medicine is still doing a job worth doing. Without those two, the page is a column of names and numbers with nothing to check them against.

Print it from the browser, or download the one-page PDF and keep a copy on your phone as well as one in the bag.

Four sources hold most of the answer, and each catches something the others miss.

Start with the patient portal. MyChart and portals like it keep a list of active medications you can read on a phone in a couple of minutes. If you want the underlying record too, here's how to download medical records from MyChart. KeptWell can also import that list from a connected MyChart account, where the health system has turned this on.

Then ask each pharmacy, mail-order included, for a printout of everything filled in the last 12 months. It's an easy step to skip, and a dispensing history catches prescriptions written by an office that never talked to the others.

Next, pull the most recent after-visit summary or discharge paperwork. Whatever changed at that visit is written there.

Last, go through the bottles at home: the cabinet, then the nightstand drawer. The over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and supplements in the list below often show up in none of the first three.

Work from the sources, not from memory. The pharmacy labels, the after-visit summary, the discharge instructions, and the patient portal all carry the current wording. For each medicine, copy across the name, the dose, when it is taken, and who prescribed it.

If the label, the portal, and the discharge sheet disagree, do not pick one and move on. Write down the disagreement and ask the prescriber or the pharmacist which instruction to follow. This sheet records what is being taken. It does not decide a dose, and it never tells anyone to stop a medicine.

Write down each of these, even the ones that feel too small to mention:

Most lists go wrong in the copying, when someone writes a bottle down in their own shorthand. Here are four rows written the way a pharmacist would want to read them. They show the format, not anyone's treatment.

Three habits make the difference. Copy the strength exactly as the label prints it, because the same medicine often comes in more than one strength. Write the dose in the unit you actually count out: tablets, drops, puffs. And for anything taken only when needed, write what it's for and how often it has really been used lately. "As needed" on its own doesn't tell a doctor whether that means twice a month or twice a day.

Write "store-bought" under Prescriber for anything bought without a prescription, so nobody goes looking for an office to call. Use Notes for how you checked a row, or for anything still open, like a supplement nobody has mentioned to the doctor yet.

Put the date at the top and note who checked the details. A list with no date makes everyone guess, and in a hurry people guess wrong.

When the care team confirms a change, update the sheet and reprint it. Mark the old page as replaced, or get rid of it, so nobody hands a clinician last month’s doses.

Where something is still uncertain, let the uncertainty show. A blank space, or a short note saying it needs confirmation, tells a clinician far more than a number someone guessed at.

The medication schedule tool lays the same medicines out by time of day. A medication administration record is where each person who gives a dose initials it, so nobody gives it twice.

The list works hardest when it travels with everything else the clinic asks for: the medical history form, your written questions, and any reports they requested. Download the records starter pack (PDF) for a short summary page and appointment notes, with a place to write down where the current medication list lives.

For the wider filing system, and for deciding what to keep and what to let go of, see how to organize medical records. Between visits, give the whole packet one home in a medical records binder you can pick up on the way out the door.