Doctor Visit Prep Skill

The average appointment gives you a handful of minutes and interrupts your opening sentence fast — and most of that budget gets spent reconstructing a timeline you could have brought written down. This skill builds the one-page visit sheet clinicians actually want: symptoms in onset-duration-severity-pattern form, the medication list that's actually current, and the questions ranked so the important ones happen even if time doesn't. It prepares the communication; the medicine stays with the doctor.

What This Skill Produces

• The symptom brief — each concern in clinical shape: what, since when, how bad (0–10), what makes it better/worse, what's changed
• The current-state sheet — medications with doses (including supplements), allergies, relevant history, other clinicians involved
• The ranked question list — top 3 first, because visits end mid-list
• Advocacy scripts — the phrases for feeling dismissed, asking about alternatives, and getting findings documented

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The reason for the visit — new problem, follow-up, annual, or the-thing-they're-worried-about (often different from the stated reason; ask gently)
• The symptom story, unstructured — let them ramble; the skill does the structuring into timeline form
• Medications and supplements as actually taken — not as prescribed; the gap is clinically relevant and the sheet records reality with the discrepancy noted for discussion
• What they're afraid of — the unasked question ("could this be cancer?") is the visit's real agenda; putting it on paper is how it gets answered instead of orbited

Framework: The 12-Minute Rules

1. Timeline beats adjectives: "sharp right-side pain, started ~3 weeks ago, 6/10 at worst, worse after meals, new this year" is usable; "it hurts a lot lately" restarts the interview. Every symptom gets onset / severity / pattern / modifiers / trajectory.
2. Lead with the agenda: "I have three things: X, Y, and the one I'm most worried about is Z" — said in the first thirty seconds — is the single highest-leverage sentence in healthcare. The sheet opens with it, verbatim.