Anticoagulation management and stroke prevention: a patient’s guide

Anticoagulation management and stroke prevention: a patient's guide is designed to give you, as a patient or carer, the knowledge, skills and confidence to monitor oral anticoagulation therapy.

This course comprises multimedia material and includes quizzes and exercises to check how much you have learnt. On successful completion of the course, you will be awarded a certificate.

Course summary

After completing this course, you will be able to:

  1. Describe the benefits of anticoagulation self-monitoring for you
  2. Successfully test your INR using a coagulometer
  3. Describe how anticoagulants affect blood clotting
  4. Summarise what the INR means, and how your dose of warfarin is adjusted according to your INR result
  5. Summarise how other medicines, diet and alcohol affect the INR
  6. Identify the common side effects of warfarin and how to manage these
  7. Describe your responsibilities, and those of the anticoagulant clinic, when you are self-monitoring your oral anticogulation
  8. Engage more effectively in consultations with your anticoagulation practitioner

Prerequisites

You need to be on long-term oral anticoagulant treatment (warfarin) – or a carer for someone on this treatment – and wish to take a bigger role in monitoring your treatment to make full use of this course.

Timing and access

5 - 10 hours on-line learning time

You can study at your own pace and start and stop whenever you like; our innovative Learning Line will record your activity and allow you to pick up from where you left off. Your work will not be lost!

Using the content

Whilst we recommend that you work through the activities in the order that they appear on the screen, this is not absolutely necessary. The activities are of varying lengths and indicative learning times are shown against each activity.

Most activities include quizzes to test your knowledge before and after reading the material. There will sometimes be asked about your thoughts and experiences, exercises that are called ‘Points to Ponder’. You are encouraged to share these thoughts and experiences with other learners on your Learning Line. Although both the quizzes and reflective exercises are optional, many people find them useful to demonstrate to themselves how much they have learnt and to network with other people.

It is important that by the end of the course you are able to demonstrate that you can use a coagulometer to test your blood. A local mentor, or your anticoagulation practitioner, will check that you are able to do this

The Learning Line

The Learning Line appears in the left hand side of your screen. It keeps a record of what you've learned and what you would like to return to.

What's more, it's a place where you can share your thoughts on the learning material and message your tutor with questions or requests for clarification.

If you'd like to find out more about how the Learning Line works, why not try the demonstrations course freely available here.