Patient Education
Specialized Information
"Patient Care Partnership ." Information for hospital patients about their rights and responsibilities. Available in multiple languages.
Common Medical Tests described by the Merck Manual Home Health Handbook.
Clinical Trials
ClinicalTrials.gov . Information about current clinical trials and how to become a participant.
Health Information Literacy
FamilyDoctor.org . Produced by the American Academy of Family Physicians.
MayoClinic.com . Information on symptoms, causes, and treatments for numerous diseases and conditions.
MedicineNet . Information on conditions, diseases, tests, and procedures.
MedlinePlus . Links to resources on drugs, diseases, and other medical information. Provides health tutorials and helps to search the medical literature in PubMed.
UpToDate for Patients . Literature reviews on health topics.
Consumer Health Complete (UH Hilo access). Full-text content from over 500 journals and magazines, 230 full-text reference books, numerous pamphlets, images, and videos. (Hawaiʻi CC access)
National Library of Medicine Resources for the Public (NLM) . NLM, part of the National Institutes of Health, provides extensive online consumer health information resources in both English and Spanish through MedlinePlus® . MedlinePlus has comprehensive, up-to-date, easy-to-read information on nearly 800 health topics . It features information on thousands of prescription and over-the-counter medicines and alternative treatments such as herbal products.
Net Wellness . A non-profit consumer health website providing high-quality information created and evaluated by medical and health professional faculty at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio State University, and the University of Cincinnati.
AHRQ (U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) Consumers & Patients . Information to help members of the public improve their health.
Centers for Disease Control . The website provides resources on health and safety topics, including diseases and conditions, emergency preparedness and response, environmental health, healthy living, life stages and populations, injury, violence and safety, travelers' health, and workplace safety and health.
Health.gov . Web portal to health programs of federal government agencies.
Resources on Drugs for Patients
Drugs Section of the Merck Manual Consumer Version.
MedlinePlus Drugs, Herbs and Supplements .
Drug Interactions Checker . The Drug Interactions Checker explains the mechanism of each drug interaction, the level of significance of the interaction (major, moderate or minor), and in certain cases, can provide the recommended course of action to manage the interaction.
Hospital Quality Resources
Hospital Compare . This Medicare website can help you compare the quality of care for certain medical conditions at more than 4,000 hospitals and find information about Medicare Coverage in hospitals.
Data.Medicare.Gov . Information on patients' hospital experiences as well as the outcomes of care received in hospitals.
Department of Health and Human Services report from January 2012: "Hospital Incident Reporting Systems Do Not Capture Most Patient Harm ."
Is Your Hospital Joint Commission-Accredited?
The Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths . A not-for-profit educational campaign to reduce hospital infection. Includes "15 Steps You Can Take to Reduce Your Risk of a Hospital Infection ."
The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA). "SHEA's mission is to prevent and control infections in healthcare settings." Its website includes resources including guides on health-care associated infections.
Leapfrog Hospital Quality and Safety Survey Results . The Leapfrog Group is made up of more than 170 companies and organizations that buy health care. The group works to reduce preventable medical mistakes and improve the quality and affordability of health care.