There are many good reasons you should have a copy of your records, your child’s records and your spouse’s records. The most basic reason is if you move, you would need to find a new doctor and having complete copies of your medical records make this important. Not only do you not have to wait for doctors to request and receive records but you get to look through them and make sure everything is accurate. Doctors see multiple patients every day and that means they are busy.

When I was younger I had a heart issue that was caused by my brain, they had told me if medication did not work I would need a pace maker. Thankfully no pace maker was required. However, when seeing doctors I disclose the heart condition, a hand specialist I saw in 2011 noted in my records that I have a stent in my heart. Nope, that is 100% incorrect, if I hadn’t looked through my medical records though I would have never know about this error that could be passed on to other doctors.

Keeping your child’s medical records is a great idea because you never know where they may end up as an adult. As a parent you have to keep updated copies of vaccination records for school, but most people stop keeping track after the school no longer requires them. If your child travels abroad they will need copies of all vaccinations, if they end up going to college across the country or moving out and leaving town, they will need to find a doctor and having that information at hand makes everything much easier.

I believe in advocacy for yourself and those you care for so much that each of my children, my husband, myself and my dogs all have folders with their health information. This probably seems weird to most people, once I received a service dog I had a folder with all of his information in it from the tests and shots they had given him so it just seemed natural to continue. Now, we have 3 big dogs and I have all of their information too, including blood tests since these most often show you the first time there’s a problem.