As a healthcare consumer, you have the right to expect high quality healthcare. One way you can make sure you get good quality healthcare is to be an active member of your healthcare team. Patients who talk with their doctors tend to be happier with their care and have better medical results.

Be an involved consumer. Ask questions at your next medical appointment. Take the time to learn what kind of screening tests a person your age needs. Learn about your condition if you or a loved one has received a diagnosis, and make sure you ask questions about treatment options.

Patient Education Brochures

Title	Download
Reducing Your Risk of Blood Clots or VTE
Reducing Your Risk of Blood Clots or VTE (With Vena Caval Filter)
Catheter Care & Infection Control Staying Safe While Using an Indwelling Urinary Catheter Staying Safe While Using an Indwelling Urinary Catheter
It's your Healthcare: Be Involved!
Working Together to Eliminate Healthcare-Acquired Infections These precautions are in place to help prevent the spread of infection between patients in hospitals/healthcare facilities.
Heart Failure
Partnering to Prevent Falls in the Hospital
Fall Prevention at Home
Newborn Screening: Protecting Your Baby's Health
Let Nature Take its Course Talk to your doctor, nurse or midwife about the risks of choosing to have your baby early
Help Us Protect Your Skin Informing you and your family about pressure ulcers and how you can assist your healthcare providers in preventing them.

Other Resources

• Six Ways to be a Safe Patient
  If you have to go to the hospital, make sure you do everything you can to make your visit as safe as possible. The federal Department of Health and Human Services has a valuable resource to help you do just that. Click here to read about six ways you can be a safe patient.
  
  
• Ensuring Pediatric Safety in General Hospitals

• Speak Up Posters: English  |  Spanish
  

• Partnership for Patients 2012 Annual Report for Consumers

• Community Conversations About Mental Health

• Million Hearts: Help us prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes by 2017.

• Choosing Wisely
  

• Patient and Family Engagement from A to Z

• How to Avoid Being Readmitted to the Hospital Fact Sheet

• Discharge Checklist and Care Transition Plan

• Treating Sleep Apnea: A Review of the Research for Adults
  
  
• Methods for Delivering Insulin and Monitoring Blood Sugar: A Review of the Research for Children, Teens, and Adults With Diabetes
  
  
• Medicines for Type 2 Diabetes: A Review of Research for Adults
  
  
• Preventing Blood Clots After Hip or Knee Replacement Surgery or Surgery for a Broken Hip: A Review of Research for Adults
  
  
• Treating and Preventing C-diff Infections: A Review of the Research for Adults and Their Caregivers

• Thinking About Inducing Your Labor: A Guide for Pregnant Women

• Safe Medications During Pregnancy
  
  
• SBAR Communication Technique for Patients and Advocates
• Research Summaries for Consumers, Clinicians, and Policymakers
  The Effective Health Care Program creates free research summaries about the benefits and risks of different treatments for different health conditions. The summaries are based on comparative effectiveness reviews that cover health topics suggested by the public.

• Be Heart Healthy
  The Web site offers a wealth of up-to-date information, advice, resources and links. Through this user-friendly Web site, patients can enroll in a heart failure clinic located by county so they can receive comprehensive follow-up care, search a list of pharmacies that deliver medications and find educational programs and exercise classes.

• Thinking About Inducing Labor: A Guide for Pregnant Women
  This guide covers what research can and can't tell us about elective induction. It is based on a government-funded review of research reports about elective induction of labor.

• Be More Involved in Your Health Care: Tips for Patients
  Patients get better care when they talk with their doctor. This short, easy-to-read brochure gives tips that will help you be prepared before, during and after medical appointments.

• Question Builder
  Be prepared for your next medical appointment. The Question Builder makes it easy to create a list of questions to take to appointments.

• Healthy Men
  The preventive tests every man should have.

• Protect Yourself against Shingles: Get Vaccinated
  Almost one out of three people in America will develop shingles during their lifetime. Your risk increases as you get older. People 60 years of age or older should get vaccinated against this painful disease. For more information about shingles, click here.

• Simple Steps Can Reduce Healthcare-Associated Infections
  This resource, available as a podcast or an article transcript, offers simple steps you can take to lower the risk of getting a healthcare-associated infection.