Build a Care Notebook for Your Child
“I use a Care Notebook to organize my thoughts and concerns before a doctor's appointment. It gives me confidence and credibility."
A Care Notebook is a tool that can help you organize important information about your child. Bring the notebook to appointments and meetings, so you can easily share information with doctors, therapists, and school or child care staff.
A Care Notebook can help you:
- Keep track of your child’s medicines or treatments
- Organize phone numbers for health care providers and community organizations
- Prepare for appointments
- File information about your child’s health history
- Share new information with your child’s primary doctor, public health or school nurse, daycare staff, and others caring for your child
To set up your Care Notebook:
- Step 1 - Gather information: Organize important health information you already have on hand. This may include reports from recent doctors’ visits, immunization records, a summary of a hospital stay, test results, or this year’s school plan.
- Step 2 - Select and download Care Notebook pages: Decide which pages will help you keep track of information about your child. Choose the pages you like. You can print copies and fill them out by hand, or download copies and save them to your computer so that you can easily update the pages.
- Step 3 - Choose what to keep in your Care Notebook: Decide on the information you need most often, and what information is needed by others caring for your child. Store other or older information in a file drawer or box where you can find it if needed.
- Step 4 - Purchase a three ring binder to organize the pages and assemble your Care Notebook: The key is to make it easy for you to find the information you need. You may find it helpful to use dividers to create your own sections (lab, xray etc), pocket dividers to store reports, and/or plastic pages to store business cards and photographs.
Care Notebook: Download the entire Care Notebook or use the links below to download out a specific page.