Educate Patients and Families

Educate Patients and Families

MedlinePlus offers resources to educate patients and their families on their disease or condition:

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  Handouts: over 30,000 links to printable web pages and downloadable items in English; over 10,000 links to Spanish materials
  
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  The Multiple Languages link points to information in over 45 languages
  
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  Easy to Read materials use common words for diseases and conditions
  
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  The A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia in English and Spanish is updated quarterly
  
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  The over 975 Health Topics on diseases, illnesses, and health conditions are reviewed twice a year with new links added daily
  
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  Anatomy Videos in English and Spanish and the hour-long Surgery Videos are updated annually
  
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  Directories of libraries and health care providers and links to Organizations
  
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  Email Announcement Lists share new topics and resources added to MedlinePlus
  

External Resources

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  Links to selected websites vetted through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) including other government agencies, professional organizations and partners
  

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  Links to resources including genetic testing and related sites, health literacy information and health statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics
  

Linking to MedlinePlus

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/linking.html

Anyone is welcome to link to MedlinePlus and/or to any of its health topic pages.

MedlinePlus Connect links information to patient portals and electronic health records; see: http://medlineplus.gov/connect.

Need Help?

Librarians find health information for patients and professionals. Identify a local library at http://nnlm.gov/members. The National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM), an outreach program of NLM, provides assistance and training nationwide. Contact NN/LM via their website at: http://nnlm.gov.
Funded under contract awarded by the DHHS, NIH, National Library of Medicine and developed and updated by the NN/LM staff. This resource is available freely at: http://nnlm.gov/training/resources/mp4hptri.pdf

Reviewed: April 2016



http://medlineplus.gov/

MedlinePlus^®

for Health Professionals

Information for Patients & Families

and Resources for Health Professionals

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  Patient education information including handouts and easy-to-read resources
  
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  Links to authoritative information in multiple languages
  
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  Medical Encyclopedia with easy to understand patient instruction pages
  
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  Links to searches of PubMed/MEDLINE for patient appropriate journal articles
  
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  Anatomy and surgery videos
  
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  Information on complementary and alternative therapies and remedies
  
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  Mobile MedlinePlus accesses information at the point of care
  
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  MedlinePlus Connect links health information to health records
  

About MedlinePlus.gov

MedlinePlus was developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and offers free, high quality, up-to-date health information from selected resources.

Links to NLM and NIH Databases

MedlinePlus provides links to additional consumer-friendly databases:

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  ClinicalTrials.gov: over 213,000 studies on drugs and treatments http://clinicaltrials.gov/
  
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  DailyMed: with nearly 85, 000 FDA approved drug labels and ingredients http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/
  
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  Dietary Supplement Label Database: over 17,000 dietary supplement products http://www.dsld.nlm.nih.gov/
  
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  Genetics Home Reference: over 1,100 gene affected health conditions and diseases http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/
  
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  LactMed: information on nearly 1200 drugs affecting mothers and breastfed infants http://lactmed.nlm.nih.gov/
  
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  NIHSeniorHealth.gov: easy-to-navigate website for seniors and their caregivers http://nihseniorhealth.gov/
  

Information Prescription

http://informationrx.org/

Point your patients to MedlinePlus – visit the Information Rx to order free materials:

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  MedlinePlus.gov “prescription” pad, bookmarks, posters, and more
  
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  My Health Record cards including a blood pressure record and “my medications”
  

Find Images and Diagrams

Include image in the search (e.g. spine image) for links to images and diagrams:

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  The A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia contains photographs, illustrations, and diagrams in over 4,000 articles
  
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  Detailed images of nearly 250 skin diseases are provided by Logical Images through links to Skinsight^SM
  
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  Follow additional links to atlases, image galleries, radiology sites, and other visual resources
  

Identify PubMed^® Articles

To identify articles appropriate for patients and families, MedlinePlus creates a PubMed search which automatically adds terminology to retrieve listings from consumer health journals, nursing journals and patient education handouts for the topic or disease of interest.

On an individual Health Topic page in the English version of MedlinePlus, under the Research section, click on Journal Articles and then click on: -- see more articles. Once in PubMed, review the Search details box to see the exact terms used to create the search.