Patient/caregiver was educated on how to take doral as follows:

1. Take the medication dose at the same time every day, for the duration prescribed. This can help with maintaining the required therapeutic concentration of medication in the blood and maintain compliance with intake of medication. Doral is usually taken 30 – 45 minutes before bedtime. Have a regular sleep routine can help intake of doral on time.
2. Doral can induce some nausea and vomiting, when taken on empty stomach. Taking the medication with some food or snack can help avoid these unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms.
3. Take the regular tablet as a whole with a glass of water. If you encounter difficulty swallowing the whole regular tablet, check with your doctor if you may cut the pill and swallow it in pieces with a glass of water. Usually tablets that can be cut bear a scoreline, displaying the line of cut. Check if your tablet has any. Individuals with swallowing difficulties may check with their physician, if they could crush the pill and sprinkle the powder on a spoonful of soft jelly or applesauce and swallow the jelly or sauce along with the medication.
4. Do not take doral with alcohol. Both alcohol and doral cause dizziness and depress the respirations. When taken together, their side-effects on respirations and dizziness can get added up. This can result in compromised safety, lead to severe respiratory depression, and can even be fatal.
5. Observe a regular sleep time every evening, as sleep is a habit that can be trained. Take the dose of doral about an hour before the sleep time, as it needs about 30 – 45 minutes to show the desired effect of sleep induction. Maintaining compliance with the sleep time and medication intake an hour before the sleep time can help avoid forgetting the medication intake.
6. On some random day, if your schedule changes and you are not going to bed at the usual time, adjust your intake of doral accordingly. As the medication quickly induces sleep, taking the medication at the usual time and delaying your bedtime, can leave you severely drowsy. Trying to remain active in a drowsy state can invite risk for injury and accidents.
7. Therapeutic effects of doral taken for relief of insomnia can last for about 8 hours. Doral carries the risk of inducing temporary short-term memory loss at the end of these 8 hours. If you have a shorter sleep time in bed for the night, less than the 8 hour duration for which doral acts, you could probably experience the symptoms of short-term memory loss and confusion, when you wake up. This can compromise safety and lead to falls and accidents. So, plan to have atleast 8 hours of restful sleep in the night, if you are taking dose of doral.
8. If your schedule does not permit an eight hour sleep time for the night, you can avoid taking the dose of doral. This helps to avoid the risk for confusion and short-term memory loss, during your waking hours the next morning, thus helping to avoid any falls and accidents. Notify your doctor on dose noncompliance. Do not take an extra dose the following day, trying to make up for the missed dose. Taking unscheduled extra doses can lead to drug overdose and toxicity with doral.
9. Your physician could change the dose of doral, based on the response you show, relief obtained from insomnia, or other side-effects developed. So, maintain compliance with follow-up physician appointments, to have your doctor updated. Notify your doctor of any worsening insomnia, severe daytime drowsiness, anxiety, muscle spasms, worsening muscle pain and discomfort, episodes of seizures, or other continuing unpleasant side-effects, so that, a change in plan of care could be considered. Be accommodative to the plan of dose changes, until you show an optimum response.
10. Continue taking doral as ordered, for the prescribed length of time, even if you experience relief from the symptoms of insomnia. Discontinuing the medication abruptly, without physician recommendation, can result in exacerbation of anxiety episodes, precipitation of seizures, muscle spasms and unpleasant withdrawal symptoms of insomnia and hallucinations. Discontinuing the medication should be only on recommendation by your physician
11. Individuals develop tolerance to the dose of doral with diminished therapeutic response over time. Do not discontinue taking the medication, as you failed to see the continuing response to the medication intake. Report to your physician regarding any blunting of therapeutic response, with rebound of insomnia, anxiety, nervousness, irritability, and restlessness. Your physician could consider a change in the plan of care, by changing the medication or increasing the dose of doral, to provide the desired therapeutic relief. Increasing dose of doral could increase risk for addiction though, as doral intake can be habit forming and carries a potential for addiction. Due to the risk for addiction involved, doral is usually prescribed for short span of time only, for a maximum of 2 weeks. The risk for addiction is even more in individuals with history of substance/drug abuse, as the craving for the desired effect in these individuals will be high. If symptoms of insomnia are not relieved or further worsen within this time period, notify your doctor on the same, to have your sleep disturbance further investigated into.
12. Maintain strict compliance with intake of the medication as ordered, with regards to dosage and frequency, to derive the benefit of the medication.
13. Do not change the dose on this medication without consulting your doctor.