A caregiver’s bindera parent’s care in one private place

Method

1. 1

   Agree with your father what goes in

   This is his information. Before you make anything, sit down with him and agree what the binder is for and what it holds. Some people want everything written down; some do not want their mood or their bathroom trips in anyone’s notes. Write what you agreed in the shelf’s description, in a line.

   Ask each clinic whether it needs a form from him naming you before staff can talk to you about his care. Most do. That is a matter between him and the clinic, and the binder only records where the signed copy is.

2. 2

   Let your assistant build it from the paperwork

   Ask the pharmacy for a printed list of everything on file. Give it and the last few after-visit summaries to your assistant, as files or photos in the assistant itself; know.sh has no upload. If you and your father would rather this not pass through a cloud provider, a local model through Ollama reads it on your own machine.

   Ask it to build a private shelf, Dad’s care, with four documents: Medications, a finding per medication with name, strength and directions copied word for word; Clinicians and appointments, a finding per clinician and per upcoming visit; Questions for the next visit; and an empty Daily log. Tell it to copy, never tidy, and to add nothing medical of its own.

3. 3

   Check every line in the editor

   Open Medications, press Edit, and check every finding against the label on the bottle and the printed list, “take with food” and the prescriber’s name included. Fix what is wrong by hand. When a clinician later changes something, edit that finding yourself with the date and who made the change; Revisions keeps the old version.

   In Clinicians and appointments, add the office numbers, the nurse line, and where the patient portal’s sign-in is kept, never the password. After each visit, write what was said under the appointment while it is fresh, and Highlight what needs doing, such as a referral to call about.

4. 4

   Keep the log in plain words

   The Daily log has one finding per week, titled “Week of 7 September”, with a dated line or two per day. Write what you saw, not what you think it means: “3:40 p.m., froze in the kitchen doorway for about twenty seconds; the tape line on the floor helped.” Note the time, because clinicians often ask.

   If the clinic gives you its own diary form for particular symptoms, use theirs for those and keep this log for everything else. Five minutes at the end of the day is enough. Let your father add his own lines, spoken to you if typing is hard.

5. 5

   Let your assistant organise the questions

   A week before the visit, open Questions for the next visit and make a finding for it, filed as a Question: “Neurology, 14 October”. Put in every question you have both collected, rough as they are. Then ask your assistant to group the questions in that finding by topic, put your father’s own first, and keep your wording.

   Your assistant is organising, not advising. It should add no questions of its own about medicines or symptoms, and if it does, delete them. Read the grouped list with your father and cut it to what fits in fifteen minutes.

6. 6

   Ask your assistant to summarise the log, then check it

   Ask your assistant to read the Daily log on the Dad’s care shelf and count what you recorded since the last visit: how many days each kind of event appears, the times you wrote down, and your own words for them. Tell it not to interpret, suggest causes or connect anything to medications, and to file the summary as a finding of its own beside the visit’s questions.

   Then check the counts against the log yourself. Any assistant can miscount or misquote, and this page will be read by a doctor. Correct it in the editor; Revisions shows which lines the assistant wrote.

7. 7

   Take it into the room

   On the day, open the visit’s finding in the know.sh iOS app, which is in TestFlight beta. Read the questions in order, let your father ask his, and show the log summary on your screen if the neurologist wants to see it. Type the answers into the finding as you go, or straight after in the car park.

   Siblings will ask how it went. Tell them by phone, or copy the parts your father is happy to share into a message. There is no link to send, and there should not be one.