Educating patients is an important part of clinical practice. In order to be active partners in managing their healthcare, patients need to know about their condition. Gathering the information, making sure it reflects the latest research, and translating it from technical medical language into lay terms can be a formidable task. With the recent explosion in available information sources—many of them of questionable value—it becomes even more important to have a source of reliable information for patients.

To meet this very real need, we have prepared patient education monographs to serve as companions to many of our professional monographs. These monographs have been created in a printable format so that you can provide them directly to your patients. Each patient monograph reflects the same accurate, science-based information as its professional counterpart, putting you and your patients on the same page. These companion monographs can be accessed directly from the professional monograph by clicking on the icon "View Patient Education" in the upper right hand menu.