What Sections Does Your Patient Binder Need?
Our binder has evolved over the 5 years since Tony’s lung transplant. At first we had a few information pages in a file folder, and then moved up to the binder our team gave us after his transplant. We rejigged the information in that binder pretty quickly – archiving some of the information we didn’t need to use regularly and adding in our own sections.
You patient binder will evolve as you continue interacting with our healthcare systems. What sections does your patient binder need to start?
Make a List/ Table of Contents
These are the sections we have in Tony’s binder:
- * One-page health summary for quick reference
- * Contact list
- * Medication list and information on medications
- * Notes for each physician, nurse practitioner and specialist
- * Upcoming test information – such as appointment information sent by various clinics and copies of requisitions (because guess what – sometimes requisitions go astray).
- * Sections for handouts for things like Occupational and Physio-therapy. We also had sections for tracking Tony’s vital signs (required by transplant), but have since moved those onto an app. Again, some of your sections will evolve. This is to be expected.
Set Up Your Sections
The sections that haven’t changed for us are those we’ll work on creating over the next few weeks:
- * One page health summary
- * Contact list
- * Medication list
After that, consider having a section for ‘Upcoming Tests’ and one for each of your physicians/nurse practitioners. I also carry our Powers of Attorney as well. We cover this later in ‘Learning the Ropes’, but you might consider creating a section to hold a copy of this paperwork. The work you do this week will set you up to get a start on next week’s action – creating the one-page personal health summary! Let me know if you have any questions about planning the information you’d like to have in your binder.
