What goes on the page, and in what order?
| Section | Contents | Why it is there |
|---|---|---|
| Period | The dates the report covers, and how many of those days have entries | A report over 30 days with 27 logged is a different thing from one with 9 |
| Frequency | Days with the symptom, episodes if they are countable | The first question in almost every consultation |
| Severity | Average and worst on your fixed scale, with the anchor words | Anchors make the numbers readable by someone who is not you |
| Location | Areas with counts; left, right, both; whether it moved | Diagnostic weight, and often the thing memory loses first |
| Timing | Time of day, duration, since when, trend | Separates a new problem from a changing old one |
| Context | Sleep, medication, cycle, anything relevant, as counts | Lets the clinician see what travelled with the symptom |
| What you tried | What, when, and what the next entries looked like | Saves repeating something that did not help |
Headache guidelines, for instance, ask for a diary that covers frequency, duration, severity, associated symptoms and medication taken (NICE CG150). Most chronic symptoms want the same skeleton.
What makes severity readable?
Two things: the anchors and the change. A line reading “average 5.4 of 10” means little on its own. “Average 5.4 (moderate: interrupts, I slow down), worst 8 (severe)” can be read by anyone. And because a change of roughly two points is the size that patients themselves describe as meaningful (Farrar et al., 2001), a report that shows this month against last month lets the clinician see whether anything has really moved.
When do charts help, and when do they hurt?
A chart helps when it shows something a number cannot: a trend over three months, a weekly rhythm, the gap when a medication changed. It hurts when it is decoration. Four weeks of daily ratings as a jagged line is less useful than “9 days of 30, average 5, worst 8”. If a report includes a chart, it should be one chart, labelled, with the scale and its anchors on the axis.
What gets in the way?
- Narrative. A page of prose about how the month felt is honest and slow. Put the feelings in the conversation and the facts on the page.
- Everything. Screenshots of every entry, or a 40-page export, shift the work of summarising onto the person with the least time to do it.
- Conclusions. “Caused by stress” on a report closes a question that the clinician may need open. Bring the counts on both sides instead; the guide on triggers explains why.
- False precision. Averages to two decimal places on twelve days of data look like evidence and are not.
What should you say when you hand it over?
One sentence of context and your question. “This is the last 30 days; the frequency has roughly doubled since June. My question is whether the current medication is still the right one.” Then let the page do its work. If you want more structure, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality publishes plain lists of questions worth asking (AHRQ).
What does Longnote’s report contain?
The free 30-day summary follows this skeleton in a few pages: the period and how many of its days you logged, each symptom day by day with how often it was there, its average and its worst day, the treatments under it, and the body areas involved, as a PDF. Pro adds other periods (a week, three or six months, or your own dates), choosing which trackers go in, and leaving the Longnote mark off the pages.
Sources
- Headaches in over 12s: diagnosis and management (CG150) · National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2021
- Clinical importance of changes in chronic pain intensity measured on an 11-point numerical pain rating scale · Farrar, Young, LaMoreaux, Werth & Poole, Pain, 2001
- Questions to ask your doctor · Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
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About this guide
Longnote is a self-tracking tool, not a medical device. Guides describe how to keep and read a record; they do not diagnose or treat anything. For health decisions, talk to someone qualified to make them with you.