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What to ask, what to keep, and what not to do with a report

The useful move is not decoding it yourself. It is asking four short questions of the person who ordered it.

Lesson 4 of 4

10 min Text

What this lesson says

  • Ask what the result changes: the diagnosis, the treatment, or only the follow-up
  • Ask which findings are incidental and need nothing
  • Ask what the next step is and when, and get it in writing
  • Keep every report; a previous normal result is information and saves a repeat fee
  • Do not start, stop or change a treatment on the strength of a report you have read alone

This is general education. It is not advice about your own situation, and it does not replace seeing a clinician.

Written lesson.
  1. 1. The most useful thing you can do with a report is not decode it. It is take it back to the person who ordered it and ask four short questions.
  2. 2. What does this change? A result can confirm a diagnosis, rule one out, change a treatment, or change nothing except when you are seen next. Knowing which of those you are dealing with is the whole meaning of the document.
  3. 3. Which of these findings needs nothing? Reports list everything looked at, and most of what is written down is either normal or an incidental finding that will never trouble you. Asking which lines to stop worrying about is a fair and answerable question, and most clinicians will go through them quickly.
  4. 4. What is the next step, and when? Get a date or an interval, and ask for it written on the report or the prescription. A plan that lives only in a conversation is a plan that becomes a year.
  5. 5. And: who do I contact if something changes before then? Every plan should have that answer, and leaving without it is how people end up back at the start.
  6. 6. Keep the paper. Photograph it too, and keep the photograph somewhere you will actually find it — a previous result is information, and a repeated test because nobody could find the old one is a wasted fee and a wasted week. If you keep it on a shared phone, consider where.
  7. 7. Finally, the thing not to do. Do not start, stop or change a medicine on the strength of a report you have read on your own, and be wary of searching a phrase from it late at night: search results are ranked by popularity, not by how likely they are to apply to you, and the frightening explanation for a common finding is always the better-written page. Nothing here, including this course, replaces the clinician who ordered the test.

All lessons in this course

  1. 1 Who the report was written for, and why that makes it hard to read 9 min
  2. 2 Reference ranges, flags, and why outside the range is not a verdict 11 min
  3. 3 Reading a pelvic ultrasound report without frightening yourself 12 min
  4. 4 What to ask, what to keep, and what not to do with a report 10 min Reading now

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