How to Prepare for a Health Emergency

Editor’s Note: This post is brought to you by Johna Jenkins, a nurse practitioner, and the co-founder of our sister brand A Plan for Health.

It’s your worst nightmare. Your child is in the ER and the triage nurse is asking you a million questions. You are too overwhelmed to remember answers to simple questions. It’s a horrible, helpless feeling. You need a place to store basic health information so you have it when you need it. 

This is a scenario that is all too familiar to me! As a mama, I’ve faced that difficult situation of needing easy to my son’s medical information while feeling stressed, even paralyzed, in an emergency.

That experience with my son is one of the main reasons we created A Plan for Health! The first product we created was the Medical Organizer, a pocket-sized notebook that holds vital medical information in one, easy to access spot, including:

• Health History
• Medical Provider contact info
• Medication
• Insurance Information

Get a medical organizer now so you have one less thing to worry about in an emergency. Taking this small step will help you be prepared for an emergency. Trust me, you’ll thank yourself later!

We encourage everyone to grab one Medical Organizer Notebook per family member. If you’re responsible for taking care of an older parent or are serving as a caretaker to a loved one, I’d recommend grabbing a notebook for them as well! Read on and I’ll share exactly how to fill out a medical organizer and how to prepare for a medical emergency!

Speaking from experience, when you or your loved one (and I’ve been on both sides of the fence!) is in the emergency room or at a doctor’s appointment where you are very worried about what is going on, you are most likely not going to be able to recall a lot of health information. Nor are you going to feel like having to think and fill out all of the paperwork when what you really want to be doing is paying attention to your loved one.

Here’s how to prepare for a medical emergency! Fill out a Medical Organizer notebook for every member of your family. You can use any notebook, or grab the notebook we designed for this purpose, to gather all of this information in one place. 

Having all of the information already separated and at your fingertips means you are merely transcribing rather than having to try to think about this important information. Here are some vital tips to creating your own or filling out a medical organizer:

• Create a list of important contacts. Be sure to note people who would be designated to help in certain situations. Some examples include: who can pick up kids from school, who has a key to your house, who can let out or take care of pet, who can get mail or packages or pay your bills or manage your checking account, the church pastor, best friend, children.
• Make sure that you make clear in what order you would like people contacted.
• In some instances, it may be wise to keep an additional copy of your medical organizer with your caregiver or DPOAH. This way if you are taken to the hospital via ambulance and your DPOAH meet you at the hospital, they can bring their copy with them.
• Keep a blank sticky note in the front of the medical organizer so that if you need to update some information but cannot take the time to thoroughly do so at the moment, you can jot down a reminder to update a certain topic later. 
• If you have a caregiver, make sure your caregiver knows at all times where your medical organizer is located.
• Consider making a front and back copy of your insurance cards (and possibly ID if kept in a safe location) and clip them inside your medical organizer.  If you ever lose or forget your cards, copies are there for you to use at your appointments.
• Consider making a  list all of the things that need to be packed in case of a trip or hospital stay.  If someone needs to come back home and pack a bag for you, this will make both of your lives so much easier!  You may also want to note the location of some things that would not be obvious to the person packing your bag.

Those are my top tips for preparing for a health emergency! Most importantly, have a dedicated space for all your health information. This saves time, energy, and stress. We can’t always prevent health emergencies, but we can prepare by having a medical organizer for each of our loved ones.

Click here to shop our Medical Organizer Notebooks and the entire A Plan for Health collection of wellness planners!

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