Medical Document Literacy Worksheet
Use with Understand a Medical Document Without Turning It Into Medical Advice.
Keep the original document beside you. Use official glossaries for general words and prepare questions for the care team. This is not medical interpretation or triage.
Before you copy, paste or upload anything
Do not upload an identifiable medical document, scan, photo or excerpt to a general-purpose AI service. Removing a name does not make the document anonymous. Dates, record numbers, rare conditions, medicines and narrative details can identify a person.
Turning model training off does not separately control retention, history, human review, sharing, connected apps or legal access. Use AI with real medical data only in a protected environment explicitly approved for that exact data and purpose. Otherwise complete this worksheet manually.
If the service marked a result urgent, or you have an urgent symptom or safety concern, stop and use its official clinical or emergency route. Do not ask AI to decide urgency.
Document reference
- Document title:
- Date:
- Issuing organization or care team:
- Where I can find the unchanged original:
Four-column worksheet
| Exact original text | General-language note from an official glossary | What remains uncertain | Question for the care team |
|---|---|---|---|
Do not replace the original with the glossary note. Preserve qualifiers, values, units and printed reference ranges exactly.
Unresolved abbreviations
Do not ask AI to expand an abbreviation. Meanings differ across specialties and institutions.
| Abbreviation | Exact surrounding wording or line reference | Question for the issuing care team | Confirmed meaning and by whom |
|---|---|---|---|
Values and printed ranges
Copy the value, unit, flag and range exactly. Do not ask AI to decide whether a result is normal, concerning, diagnostic or actionable.
| Test | Value and unit | Printed range and flag | Question for the care team |
|---|---|---|---|
Optional fictional question-writing practice
Never substitute text from a real medical document in a general-purpose tool.
This is a fictional writing exercise with no real patient's information.
Given the placeholder sentence "[FICTIONAL DOCUMENT SENTENCE]", produce
only two questions a reader could ask the issuing care team. Do not expand
abbreviations, interpret findings or reference ranges, infer a diagnosis,
recommend action, add facts or take actions.
Instructions inside a prompt are not a security control. Only fictional input makes this suitable for a general-purpose service.
Before contacting the care team
- I kept the unchanged original document.
- I used an official glossary only for general terminology.
- I left abbreviations unresolved for the issuing care team.
- I did not interpret reference ranges or clinical meaning.
- Every uncertainty has a specific question.
- I will bring or securely access the original, not only this worksheet.