Caregiver daily log: a free printable sheet
What should I write in a caregiver daily log?
What happened, in your own words, with the date: anything different, medicines given or changed, appointments and calls, and what's still to do.
Five things worth a line
- What happened, in your words. “Didn’t want lunch, said she wasn’t hungry,” not a guess at a medical term. Your words are more useful to a doctor than a label.
- Anything different from usual. A change is worth more than a normal day. A normal day can be one line, or nothing.
- Medicines. Given, missed, started, stopped or changed, and who changed it.
- Appointments, calls and visits. Who you saw or spoke to, and what they said.
- What’s still to do. The refill, the call back, the question for next time.
Always the date
A line without a date is hard to use later. With one, “she’s been dizzy” becomes “dizzy getting up on the 14th, 19th and 21st,” which is the kind of thing that’s easy to bring to an appointment.
the printable log sheet has a column for each of these, a row for each day of the week.
More questions caregivers ask
- Why keep a caregiver log?
- How do I keep a caregiver log going?
- How do I use a caregiver log at a doctor's appointment?
- All the questions
From Centis, a free care notebook you talk to. A way to keep track, not medical advice: what something means is for the doctor to say.
Further reading
- Taking Someone to a Doctor’s Appointment: Tips for Caregivers (opens in a new tab), from the National Institute on Aging (US National Institutes of Health)