Guides & printables
Guides & printables
Practical, patient-side guides to hospital, treatment, packing, visiting and getting through the weeks afterwards. Written from the bed and the bedside chair — no wellness language, no lectures, just the things we wish somebody had told us first time round.
Featured guides
- Patient-written guideHow to be useful when someone’s illWhen someone you care about is ill, the instinct is to do something. Bring something, fix something, say exactly the right thing. Unfortunately, illness is very good at making useful people feel useless, so most of us fall back on “Let me know if you need anything.”Read this guide
- Patient-written guideAdmitted from A&ENobody packs for this one. You go in wearing whatever you stood up in, with a phone that was never charged for a long day, and the first useful thing anybody can do is work out what needs to arrive tonight and what can wait until tomorrow.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideRecovery at homeDischarge is not the finish line.Read this guide
Going into hospital
- Patient-written guideDay surgeryDay surgery sounds wonderfully efficient. In at seven, home by teatime.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideOvernight / short stayOne night in hospital sounds so brief that people often pack for it as though they are nipping to a Travelodge.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideLonger hospital stayAfter a few days in hospital, the things that seemed trivial on day one stop feeling trivial.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideTreatment / infusion dayTreatment days have their own rhythm.Read this guide
Making hospital more bearable
- Patient-written guideComfort & dignityHospital strips away an enormous number of small ordinary things at once: your own clothes, your own bathroom, your own bedtime. Getting a few of them back is not vanity. It is usually the difference between feeling like a person and feeling like a patient.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideSleep & noiseWards do not really do “night”.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideOrganisation / ward rounds / questionsHospital creates a ridiculous amount of information for a place where you are often tired, frightened, interrupted and wearing pyjamas.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideClothing & mobilityHospital clothes need to do a job.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideHow to put on a hospital gownThere are some things hospitals assume everybody already knows.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideWashing & groomingThere is a point in hospital where a proper wash stops being a basic life task and starts feeling like an event.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideDrinking & dry mouthDrinking is one of those things that sounds completely straightforward until you are ill.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideBoredom & distractionHospital boredom is not ordinary boredom.Read this guide
- Patient-written guideTech & entertainmentHospital tech has one job: make life easier.Read this guide
Recovery & helping someone
Neurodiversity in hospital
- Neurodiversity in hospitalThe ADHDer’s guide to surviving hospitalPractical, patient-written help for ADHD in hospital: waiting, boredom, changing plans, remembering questions, nights on the ward and asking for adjustments.Read this guide
- Neurodiversity in hospitalGoing into hospital when you’re autistic — a visual storyAn adult visual guide to things you might see, hear and experience in hospital, with photographs, optional sounds and practical ways to explain your needs.Read this guide
Printables
- Free printableWard-round notesQuestions, answers, tests and scans, and what happens next. A small sheet to keep with your notebook.Open this printable
- Free printableHospital bag tag insertsPatient and next-of-kin contact details, with room to write them clearly.Open this printable
- Free printableAutism hospital staff sheetA free autism-specific printable sheet to tell hospital staff what might help with communication, touch, noise, waiting and overwhelm. Open, print or share without downloading.Open this printable
- Free printableADHD hospital staff sheetA free ADHD hospital staff sheet covering waiting, movement, changing plans, information and overwhelm. Choose what helps, then print or share.Open this printable