Taking Notes

A free planner for cancer appointments. Somewhere to put the questions before you get there, and what was actually said once you are home.

Download the planner, free Open it in the browser

Fourteen pages, half US Letter so two print on one sheet and it folds into something that fits in a bag. No email address, no sign-up, nothing to unsubscribe from.

Why it exists

Most of what is said in an appointment does not survive the drive home. That is not a failure of attention, it is what happens to everybody under that much pressure. Between 40 and 80 percent of medical information is forgotten immediately, and close to half of what people do remember is remembered wrong. Writing it down is the part that is actually within your control.

What is in it

• The basics, written down once. Diagnosis, stage, treatment name, so you are not reciting them in every waiting room.
• My three questions. Three is the number that fits in the time you will get.
• What I want my team to know. What changed, what is worrying you, what is getting in the way at home.
• What was actually said, with a box for the words you did not understand.
• Medicines, and what each one is for.
• How the week actually went. A line a day is enough to show a pattern.
• If you are offered a clinical trial. Ten questions already written out, so you do not have to think of them in the room.
• Who is who, and who to call, and when, with space for your own team's thresholds rather than ours.
• The things you have not said out loud. One page, no prompts, nobody reads it.
• Page tabs and stickers to cut out. Fold a tab over the edge of the page it names and it reads the right way up from both sides, so you can find page 11 without looking for it.

If you are a clinician or a navigator

Print it and put it in a clinic folder if it is useful. It is free to use and free to copy, and there is nothing in it that needs crediting back to us. There is a one-page note covering what it is and how to use it in clinic, meant for whoever decides these things in your service.

Download the one-page note for clinics

If your patients would use a page that is not in the planner, email us: info@protocolandpeople.org.

The rest of the deck

The planner is the short version you can hold in your hand. The cards answer over 150 of the questions that come up after a cancer diagnosis, one at a time, and they are free too.

Educational only. This is not medical advice and it is not a substitute for the conversation with your own team. It is meant to make that conversation possible.