Field kit
Checklists for the moments that go wrong
Four short lists for four moments when it's easy to miss something: before an appointment, after a new diagnosis, the day you leave the hospital, and the day you start a new medicine. Tick them on screen or print them.
On October 30, 1935, the Boeing Model 299, the prototype of the B-17 bomber, took off from Wright Field in Ohio, climbed a few hundred feet, stalled and crashed. The crew had left the gust locks engaged: the devices that hold the elevators and rudder still while an airplane sits on the ground. Two of the five men aboard died, including Maj. Ployer P. "Pete" Hill, who was in command of the flight.
The answer was not a lecture about trying harder. Boeing wrote a checklist, and the Air Corps and the airlines adopted it, because the new airplane had more steps than anyone could reliably carry in their head. The problem was complexity, not competence.
Medicine learned the same lesson much later. In 2009 a 19-item surgical safety checklist tested in eight hospitals cut deaths after surgery from 1.5% to 0.8%, and complications from 11.0% to 7.0%. Three years earlier, a checklist-based program in 103 intensive care units had brought the average rate of catheter bloodstream infections down from 7.7 to 1.4 per 1,000 catheter-days.
Those lists were built for professionals. These four are built for you, for a simple reason: you're the only person present at every one of your appointments, every pharmacy pickup and every discharge. Nobody else sees the whole sequence. Tick items on screen and they're remembered on this device, or print a clean copy and take a pen. "Print all four" gives you one list per page.
High Reliability Wellness field kit
Before an appointment
13 items
Appointments go fast. Arrive with the work already done, so the minutes you have go to your questions instead of to remembering.
Before you go
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No brief yet? Build one here.
In the room: Ask Me 3
Three questions from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's Ask Me 3. Don't leave without an answer to each.
Before you leave
Ask Me 3 is a registered trademark of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.
High Reliability Wellness field kit
After a new diagnosis
11 items
A new diagnosis arrives with a flood of information at the moment you are least able to take it in. Work through this list over several days, not in one sitting.
Get it exactly right
Before you decide on treatment
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The National Cancer Institute notes that most doctors welcome a second opinion, and that many insurers pay for one or even require it, especially before surgery. Medicare Part B covers a second opinion before medically necessary surgery that isn't an emergency, and a third if the first two differ.
Set up for the long run
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The CDC gives examples of when family history should change your care, such as a parent, brother or sister with colorectal cancer before 50.
Second-opinion notes from the National Cancer Institute and Medicare.gov; family history from the CDC. Each is linked beside the item it supports.
High Reliability Wellness field kit
The day you leave the hospital
15 items
Adapted from Medicare's Your Discharge Planning Checklist (CMS Product No. 11376, December 2025). Start it early in the stay, not on the morning you go home, and work through it with the staff: a discharge planner, nurse or social worker.
Medicines and warning signs
Getting home and managing there
Paperwork and support
For a caregiver
If you think you are being discharged too soon, you can ask for a fast appeal. Hospital patients with Medicare should be given a notice called "Important Message from Medicare," which explains how; ask for it if you don't get it. An independent reviewer decides whether covered services should continue. Call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227) for the reviewer's number in your state.
Adapted from Medicare's Your Discharge Planning Checklist, CMS Product No. 11376, December 2025.
High Reliability Wellness field kit
Starting a new medication
13 items
Every new prescription changes a system that was already running: your other medicines, what you eat and drink, your other conditions. These questions fit into time you already spend at the office and the pharmacy counter.
At the prescriber's office
At home
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Your health brief has a medicines section built for this.
Pharmacy questions quoted from the FDA's Drug Interactions: What You Should Know.
Using them well
A checklist works when it's short enough to use every time, so resist the urge to add to these until they're unwieldy. Do add the things that are specific to you: a question your cardiologist always forgets to answer, the pharmacy that keeps substituting a different manufacturer, the cousin who can drive you on Tuesdays.
Two of the lists lean on sources worth knowing in their own right. The hospital list is adapted from Medicare's own discharge planning checklist, which also includes a blank drug list and appointment log you can print. The pharmacy questions come from the FDA's guide to drug interactions. For the bigger picture of where these moments sit in the protocol, see Oversight and Tenacity.
What stays on this device
Your ticks are saved in this browser's local storage so a half-finished list is still there tomorrow. They are never sent anywhere. "Uncheck all" resets one list; the button below removes every tick, along with anything else the field kit has saved in this browser.
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Last updated October 16, 2026. Guidance cited here was current on that date; clinical guidelines change, so check with your own clinician. See our editorial policy.
Facing one of these moments now?
Dr. Scott works with patients and families through The Scott Health Advisory, including second opinions, hospital stays and the weeks after a new diagnosis.
or call 410-336-7894