Before a doctor's appointment: the short answer
Longetic keeps lab reports, medications and past visits in one timeline, which is where most of this list comes from. Write seven things before you go: what changed and when, everything you take, three questions in order, any numbers you measured at home, results from other clinics, the dates of your last tests, and what you want to leave with.
The list below is short on purpose. It fits on one page, it takes about ten minutes the evening before, and every item on it exists because it is the kind of thing people reach for in the room and cannot find. Where an entitlement, a deadline or a health service is involved, the country is named, because those things are law and they are not the same in England and in Spain.
Why does writing it down beforehand matter?
Consultations are short and memory is poor. A systematic review in BMJ Open found primary care consultations running from under a minute to about 22 minutes, with roughly half the world's population getting five minutes or less. A review in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine reported that 40 to 80% of medical information is forgotten immediately, and that almost half of what is remembered is wrong.
The systematic review of consultation length covered 67 countries and 28 million consultations, and put the range at 48 s in Bangladesh to 22.5 min in Sweden. It also found that 18 countries, representing about half the global population, spend five minutes or less. Those are national averages rather than a prediction about your own appointment, but they set the scale of the problem: the time is short, and nobody is going to hand it back to you.
What happens to the information afterwards is the other half. Roy Kessels, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, summarised the literature as 40-80% of medical information provided by healthcare practitioners is forgotten immediately, and added that almost half of the information that is remembered is incorrect. That piece is a narrative review from 2003, not a trial, and the figures are a range across studies rather than one measurement.
Here is the part most articles on this subject leave out. A Cochrane review of interventions used before consultations, covering 33 randomised trials and 8,244 patients, found that question checklists and coaching produced small and statistically significant increases for question asking, and a small rise in satisfaction. Knowledge, anxiety before the consultation and consultation length did not move significantly. The authors' own conclusion was that these interventions produce limited benefits to patients. Writing things down reliably changes what you ask. It has not been shown to change much else, and a page that promised otherwise would be overselling the evidence.
| What people claim | What the source actually found | The honest limit |
|---|---|---|
| Consultations are short | 48 s to 22.5 min across 67 countries | National averages, not your appointment |
| Most of what is said is forgotten | 40 to 80% forgotten immediately | A narrative review from 2003 |
| What you do remember may be wrong | Almost half of it, per the same review | Same source, same limit |
| Question lists help | Question asking rose, SMD 0.27 | Authors concluded limited benefits |
| They calm you down | No significant change in anxiety | From the same Cochrane review |
| They make the visit longer | No significant change in length | From the same Cochrane review |
What should you write down before a doctor's appointment?
Seven items, and they fit on one page: what changed since your last visit with dates, everything you take with the dose as printed on the box, three questions in the order you want them answered, and the numbers you measured at home. Add results from other clinics, the dates of your last tests and checks, and what you want to walk out with.
1. What changed since the last visit, with dates
Write the change and the date it started, not the adjective. A line that reads 14 September, dizzy when standing up, twice a week is useful. A line that reads feeling off lately is not, because the first question back will be when did that start, and you will be guessing. NHS guidance for patients says plainly to Write down details of your symptoms, including when they started. Dates are the part people drop, and they are the part that carries the information.
2. Everything you take, with doses, including supplements
Copy each dose exactly as printed on the box or the label, and include anything you bought yourself. NHS guidance for outpatient appointments asks patients to list medicines you're taking including prescriptions, medicines you've bought yourself, and offers the shortcut most people actually use: bring the medicine packets or your prescriptions with you, or take photos of them. A photograph of the box beats a remembered number, because the box is the source. This matters more than it sounds: a systematic review in CMAJ found medication history errors to be common at hospital admission, and while that is a different setting from a routine appointment, the mechanism is the same, which is that the history gets rebuilt from memory at every handover. If several doctors prescribe for you, there is more to it, and we wrote separately about one medication list when several doctors prescribe.
3. Your three questions, in order
Three, ranked, with the one you most need answered first. The number is not arbitrary: NHS guidance tells patients to Write down your 2 or 3 most important questions, and the ranking matters because if the appointment runs out of time it runs out at the bottom of your list, not the top. In the United States, AHRQ publishes a free app for the same job, which it says helps patients and caregivers prepare for medical appointments and maximize visit time. Which questions belong on your list depends entirely on why you are going, and that is a conversation for you and your clinician rather than something a web page can fill in.
4. The numbers you measured at home
Bring the readings and say how you took them. NHS guidance is direct about this: If you regularly use a home blood pressure monitor you should tell your GP practice. How you record them changes whether they are usable. The NICE guideline on hypertension in adults, NG136, describes home monitoring as a schedule where blood pressure is recorded twice daily, ideally in the morning and evening and where blood pressure recording continues for at least 4 days, ideally for 7 days. It also says to Discard the measurements taken on the first day, which almost nobody knows and which is the difference between a week of readings and a week of readings that can be averaged. Write the numbers, the dates and the times. Do not write what you think they mean.
5. Results from other clinics since the last visit
If you had a test somewhere your doctor cannot see, it does not exist for this appointment unless you bring it. In England, the NHS App shows results of tests you had at your GP surgery, and the same page is explicit that it will not show hospital test results that have not been sent to your GP surgery. A private test, a test from a hospital that has not forwarded it, and a test from another country are all in the same position. Write down what was tested, where, and the date, and bring the report itself if you have it. If the appointment is with somebody new rather than somebody who already knows you, the job is bigger than one page, and we covered it in a doctor-ready summary for a new doctor and in which medical records to bring to a doctor abroad.
6. The dates of your last tests and checkups
Dates, not contents. The question a clinician asks is when was the last one, and the answer is a date, which is exactly the thing that is impossible to recall under time pressure and trivial to write down beforehand. What a routine check contains differs by country, and we set that out in what an annual physical includes by country. For this page the only thing you need is the date and the place.
7. What you want to leave with
Decide this before you walk in, because deciding it afterwards is too late. It is usually one of four things: a referral, a prescription or a change to one, a test, or a plain answer about what happens next. Writing it at the bottom of the page turns a vague appointment into one with a finish line, and it gives you something to check against on the way out. What you then do with the paperwork you are handed is a separate problem, and we wrote about what to keep after the visit.
Where do you get each of these before you arrive, in England and in Spain?
In England the NHS App shows test results that reached your GP surgery, and it is open to people aged 13 or over registered with a GP in England. In Spain there is no single national portal: each comunidad autónoma runs its own, such as La Meva Salut in Catalonia or Mi Carpeta de Salud in Madrid.
The NHS App page states its own scope plainly, that You must be aged 13 or over and registered at a GP surgery in England. Spain is organised differently, and the reason is constitutional rather than technical: the Ministry of Health describes the Sistema Nacional de Salud as the services of the state administration and the comunidades autónomas together, with health competences devolved to every region. One thing does work across regional borders, which is the electronic prescription. The Ministry says it allows collection of prescribed medication from any pharmacy, including in another comunidad autónoma, with your tarjeta sanitaria.
| What you are writing down | England | Spain |
|---|---|---|
| What changed, with dates | Write it as it happens | Write it as it happens |
| Everything you take | Repeat prescription list, NHS App | Receta electrónica, tarjeta sanitaria |
| Your three questions | Write them the night before | Write them the night before |
| Home measurements | Your own monitor, recorded daily | Your own monitor, recorded daily |
| Results from other clinics | Not shown if the hospital has not sent them | Portal of the region where the test was done |
| Dates of last tests and checks | NHS App record, or your GP surgery | Historia clínica, by request |
| What you want to leave with | Decide before you go in | Decide before you go in |
Getting a copy of the record itself works differently in the two countries, and the difference is worth knowing before you ask. In Spain, Ley 41/2002 gives the patient a right of access a la documentación de la historia clínica y a obtener copia de los datos que figuran en ella, and it requires centres to set up the procedure, but it sets no deadline in days. The one-month clock people quote comes from data protection law rather than from that act: the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos states that Se la deben facilitar en el plazo de un mes, aunque se puede ampliar el plazo. So if you need a record for an appointment in Spain, ask early, and ask the centre that holds it.
What does official guidance actually tell patients to prepare?
England publishes a short list and Spain does not. An NHS page tells patients to write down their two or three most important questions, to list or bring all their medicines and pills, and to write down their symptoms and when they started. No equivalent national page for Spain could be found, only regional and hospital guidance.
This asymmetry is the most useful thing on this page, and as far as we can tell nobody has written it down. England has an official, public, four-line instruction for patients on what to do before seeing a clinician, sitting on nhs.uk. We looked for the Spanish equivalent across the Ministry of Health, semFYC and several regional health services, and did not find one. The closest official Spanish document we could find is a cardiology outpatient page from a hospital in Granada, which asks patients to Aporte la medicación y otros productos que tome, meaning bring the medication and other products you take. That is one specialty at one hospital, not national guidance, and it should not be read as more than it is.
One caveat about the English pages, since it affects how much weight to put on them. The NHS page on what to ask your doctor carries a review date of 12 January 2023 and a next review due date of 12 January 2026, which has passed. The outpatients page was reviewed on 21 April 2023 with a review due in April 2026. The advice on them is unremarkable and has not obviously aged, but they are overdue for review and we would rather say so than imply they are freshly maintained.
| Where | What the guidance tells patients to prepare | Source and review date |
|---|---|---|
| England, GP appointment | Two or three questions, medicines, symptoms with start dates | NHS, reviewed January 2023 |
| England, outpatient appointment | Symptoms, medicines, allergies, questions, appointment details | NHS, reviewed April 2023 |
| Spain, national | No national patient page found | Searched October 2026 |
| Spain, one regional hospital | Bring your medication and recent reports | Hospital in Granada, updated 2023 |
| United States | Build a question list before the visit | AHRQ QuestionBuilder app |
What changed in 2026 that affects how you prepare?
Two NHS App changes in September 2026. From version 4.78 the app shows whether a referral has been accepted, which is worth checking before an outpatient appointment. From version 4.79 the app no longer books, cancels or changes NHS Covid-19 or flu vaccinations, so that is no longer something to settle in the app beforehand.
Both changes are listed in the NHS App release notes, dated 17 September 2026 and 24 September 2026. The referral one is a small addition with a real use: if you are going to a hospital appointment, knowing the referral was accepted is one fewer thing to ask about in the room. The vaccination one cuts the other way, and it is the kind of change that quietly breaks a habit, because a step that used to live in the app now does not.
Nothing else in the last six weeks changes what a patient should do before an appointment. There was no change to NHS Health Check, to the GP contract or to outpatient processes in that window. In Spain the digital health bill was still being finalised before public consultation in mid September 2026, so it changes nothing for a patient today. Longer-horizon European work on cross-border records is real but slow, and it does not help with an appointment next week.
What goes on the one-page checklist?
One page, seven boxes, nothing to install. The checklist is a free PDF you can print or fill in on a phone, with a line for each of the seven items and room for three questions in order. It carries no doses, no target values and no advice, because those belong to the person you are about to see.
The file is a one-page appointment checklist, in A4 and US Letter, free, with no email address required. Print it, or open it on a phone and type into it. It is deliberately dull: seven headings and empty lines. The value is not in the design, it is in the fact that you filled it in the night before rather than trying to remember in a waiting room.
As a disclosure, Longetic is our product, so weigh this accordingly. It is an iPhone app that reads lab reports you already have into a searchable history, keeps doctor visits and medications in the same timeline, and sends reminders for doses, which makes items 2, 5 and 6 on this list a lookup rather than an archaeology project. It does not interpret a result, convert units, check interactions, or track weight or activity, and it is not a substitute for the appointment you are preparing for. Apple Health Records, MyChart, Patients Know Best and Evergreen Life solve overlapping parts of the same problem, and in England the NHS App is where your GP-held results live. If you want the longer version of why a current list of what you take and your check-up dates are worth keeping at all, we made that argument separately.
