Keep a Medical Journal for Each Family Member

This is the time of year when I seem to be at a doctor's office all the time, between my own yearly checkups, and the kids. (You might have figured that out already, between last week's tip for quickly finding your doctors' info on your phone, and the current suggestion.)



I picked up the idea of having a medical notebook for each family member from the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. It's brilliant for several reasons:

You have a place to jot down questions between visits. Most days, my brain is like a sieve so it's important to write things down as they occur to me.

You can easily record important info. This is includes lab results and the doctor's instructions, and even changes in height and weight. I never remember how much my kids weigh or how tall they are, and it seems like that's always requested on forms I'm filling out for them.

All of the info is in one place. There's a lot to be said for convenience and collation, and it's going to be wonderful to have all of the info we need in one place. If we have to see a new doctor, I should be able to answer any questions with the notebook!


For my family, I picked up a pack of blank books from the Bullseye Playground section at Target. You can see mine above.

I labeled a book for each family member, and put different colored stickers on the spines, so I can easily identify them. I've already used them and I've had them for less than a month!

The tricky thing is going to be getting in the habit of bringing the book to appointments. I've started adding "book" to the entry in my Google Calendar for appointments where I'm going to want to have the book with me.

Our family doesn't go to the doctor that often, thankfully, and I think these notebooks would be especially useful if you have a lot of appointments and therefore a lot of info to keep track of. They would have been great to have when my boys were newborns. Gretchen suggests creating one for your pet too, which is also a great idea.