Making sense of your medical records

Getting a copy of your medical records is one thing. Reading them is another. A GP printout, a blood test result and a hospital discharge summary are mostly written by clinicians, for other clinicians, and each one assumes you already know what the others say. If you have ever looked at your own results and not known what most of it meant, you are far from alone.

This article looks at why health information is so hard to follow, works through an example with diabetes, and suggests practical ways to make your own records easier to understand. It is general information, not medical advice, and it does not interpret anyone’s results.

Disclosure

I am a doctor, and I founded exora, a personal health record app. It appears once, near the end. Everything before that works whatever you use, including nothing at all.

Finding health information hard is normal

The HSE’s own guidance for staff defines it simply: “Health literacy is about a person’s ability to find, understand and use information to make decisions about their health” (HSE: about our plain language guidelines).

The same page gives the most recent Irish figure: “Around 1 in 4 adults in Ireland (28%) have limited health literacy”. It attributes that to the EU health literacy survey of 2021, and labels the figures preliminary.

An earlier survey found more. Ireland was one of eight countries in the European Health Literacy Survey (HLS-EU), with data collected in 2011. Irish researchers later reported that Ireland had “a slightly lower prevalence of 40%” of inadequate or problematic health literacy, against an average of 47.6% across the eight countries (Gibney et al., 2020). The survey’s main paper found that across all eight countries “at least 1 in 10 (12%)” had insufficient health literacy and “almost 1 in 2 (47%)” had limited health literacy, with groups such as people with financial difficulties, low education or older age more likely to struggle (Sørensen et al., 2015).

The two surveys used different methods, so the drop from about 40% in 2011 to 28% in 2021 may not be a real change. Treat the exact figures with care. The point that holds in both is that a large share of adults in Ireland find health information hard to use.

People notice it themselves. In research from 2015, the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) found that “Two in five (39%) Irish people are calling for doctors, nurses and pharmacists to use more understandable language”, and that “17% of people surveyed said they had taken the wrong amount of medication on at least one occasion” (NALA: health sector services).

Two things are worth noticing. These surveys measured general health information, written for the public. A medical record is not written for the public, so it is likely to be harder still. And this is not a failing of patients. The HSE’s guidance puts the job on the health service: “Using plain language helps with health literacy.”

The HSE asks its staff to write plainly

There is good news here. The HSE publishes plain language guidelines for its staff, on “How to communicate clearly with people who use our services”. They cover writing, speaking and explaining medical words.

The section on explaining medical words says: “When we have to use medical terminology we explain what they mean.” It gives examples of plain alternatives:

• instead of “hypertension”, “high blood pressure”
• instead of “renal”, “kidney”
• instead of “contusion”, “bruise”

Not every letter you receive will follow this, and older records certainly will not. Letters between doctors are still written for doctors. But it is useful to know that a plain explanation is something the HSE expects its staff to give, so asking for one is not a nuisance. It is what the guidance is for.

Why records are hard to follow

• They are written for clinicians. Shorthand, abbreviations and diagnostic terms are efficient between professionals and opaque to everyone else.
• They are scattered. In Ireland your GP keeps one record, each hospital keeps its own, and private clinics keep theirs. One part of your health can be spread across all of them, each with its own document.
• The connections are rarely written down. A prescription says what a medicine is and how much to take. It often does not say which condition it is for, and a blood test result does not say which condition it is monitoring.
• The same thing has several names. A medicine can appear under its brand name in one document and its ingredient name in another.
• There is a lot of it. Years of results and letters can run to hundreds of pages, and the important parts are not marked.

An example: diabetes

Take someone who has had type 2 diabetes for a few years. Their care produces documents from several places.

• Blood tests, including HbA1c. The HSE says HbA1c “shows how much glucose has built up in your blood in the past 2 to 3 months”, and that it is checked “as part of your routine diabetes check up” (HSE: HbA1c testing).
• Eye screening through Diabetic RetinaScreen, which is free for people aged 12 and over with type 1 or type 2 diabetes. Results come “by letter usually within 3 weeks”, with a copy to your GP (HSE National Screening Service).
• Foot checks. The HSE advises asking “a health care professional with suitable training to check your feet at least once a year” (HSE: looking after your feet).

So the eye screening letter comes from one service, the blood results from the GP’s lab, and the foot check from wherever it was done. Nothing on any of them refers to the others.

Then there are the numbers. HbA1c is the one that tracks blood glucose over time. But on a results printout it is one line among many, and nothing on the page tells you it is the one your diabetes team is watching most closely. The HSE’s advice is direct: “Always ask what your HbA1c test number is and ask your doctor what it means for you.”

Medicines are the same. The HSE describes metformin as “a medicine used to manage type 2 diabetes”, and says it is “usually prescribed if diet and exercise have not been enough to control your diabetes”. It also names a brand, Glucophage (HSE: about metformin). So the same medicine can appear as metformin on one document and Glucophage on another. Plenty of people take it every day without thinking of it as “my diabetes medicine”. On a prescription it is just a name and a dose.

So the diabetes history that matters, how it was found, what treatment was started, how the HbA1c has moved since, and whether the eye and foot checks are up to date, exists only in pieces. Your GP carries the joined-up picture in their head, or in their notes. Patients rarely get a copy of that picture.

Practical ways to make sense of yours

1. Start with what you can already see. If you are 16 or over with a verified MyGovID, the HSE Health App can show your hospital discharge summaries, a record of hospital procedures and medicines refunded under the medical card or Drugs Payment Scheme (HSE). It does not show test results; our guide to test results in Ireland explains where those go. For anything else, ask your GP, or use a data access request, which is free.
2. Look up the condition, not the whole letter. The HSE’s health A to Z explains conditions, tests and treatments in plain language. Look up the diagnosis or the test name, then take what you still do not understand to your GP.
3. Ask NALA’s three questions. NALA suggests asking your doctor, nurse or pharmacist three things at every visit: “What is my main problem?”, “What do I need to do?” and “Why is it important for me to do this?” (NALA: tips for understanding health information).
4. Write your questions down first, and check you understood. NALA also suggests writing a note of your questions before the appointment, and to “Repeat back to the healthcare provider what you think they said to you.”
5. Ask what each medicine is for. Your GP or pharmacist can tell you which condition each medicine treats. Write it down next to the medicine, along with any other name it goes by.
6. Ask which tests are the important ones. For a long-term condition, there are usually one or two results your doctor watches most closely. Knowing which ones means you can see whether they are being checked as often as planned.
7. Keep results together, in date order. A single result means little on its own. A series shows a trend, and your GP can tell you what that trend means for you.
8. Write a short summary in your own words. A few lines for each condition: when it started, what has been done, and where it stands. It helps when you see a new doctor.
9. Take someone with you. A second person at an appointment can listen, take notes, and ask the question you forgot.

If something in your records worries you, contact your GP rather than searching for it. If you urgently need a GP and the surgery is closed, the HSE says to contact a GP out of hours, and to call 112 or 999 if someone needs urgent medical attention or a life is at risk.

Where exora fits, and where it does not

exora is a personal health record app. You upload documents you already have, such as PDFs, photos or scans of letters and results, and exora reads them for you, with a reading system built for medical records. It organises the conditions, medicines, test results and visits into one record, with every detail linked back to the page it came from. exora is free to start, with an optional membership.

Health Stories goes a step further and does the joining up described above. A story starts from a condition, a treatment or an operation in your records, gathers the medicines, tests and visits that belong to it, and writes them up in plain language: where things stand, the story so far, and a timeline built from the records themselves. A Diabetes story brings the diabetes medicines on your record together with your HbA1c and glucose results and the visits where they came up, with each test shown on a chart and each record one tap away. Search for “metformin” and you find the Diabetes story it belongs to. Keeping stories up to date as you add documents is part of exora membership.

Where it does not help, plainly:

• It can misread. Stories are written by exora from your own records, and the reading is automated, so check anything that matters against the original. That is why every detail links back to it.
• It explains what your records say, not what they mean for you. It does not diagnose, interpret your results or tell you what to do. Talk to your GP about that.
• No HSE connection. exora has no link to the HSE Health App, your GP’s system or any HSE service, and no Irish health-data certification. It is only as complete as the documents you add.
• Your data is stored in Sydney, Australia, outside the EU. How we handle it is on our security page; read it before you upload anything.
• It is not medical advice.

If you are still gathering the documents, our guide to organising paper medical records and scans covers that step. And if a relative needs to read your records in another language, see getting medical records translated in Ireland.

The short version

Struggling with your records is normal. The HSE says around 1 in 4 adults in Ireland (28%) had limited health literacy in preliminary 2021 survey results, and an earlier survey, from 2011, put the figure at about 40%. Records are harder still, because they are written for clinicians, scattered across your GP, hospitals and private clinics, and rarely say how one thing connects to another. The HSE asks its staff to use plain language and explain medical words. In the meantime, start with the HSE Health App, look up conditions in the HSE health A to Z, ask NALA’s three questions, ask what each medicine and test is for, keep results in date order, and take your questions to your GP.

Sources

• HSE: about our plain language guidelines (definition, 28% from the 2021 EU health literacy survey, preliminary)
• HSE: plain language guidelines and explaining medical words
• Gibney S et al. Increasing health literacy may reduce health inequalities: evidence from a national population survey in Ireland. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2020 (Ireland 40%, eight-country mean 47.6%, HLS-EU data collected 2011)
• Sørensen K et al. Health literacy in Europe: comparative results of the European health literacy survey (HLS-EU). European Journal of Public Health, 2015 (12% and 47% across eight countries, social gradient)
• NALA: health sector services (2015 research, 39% and 17%) and NALA: tips for understanding health information
• HSE: HbA1c testing, HSE: looking after your feet and HSE: about metformin
• HSE National Screening Service: Diabetic RetinaScreen questions answered
• HSE: about your HSE Health App and HSE: health A to Z
• HSE: when to go to a GP out of hours

Statistics and guidance are sourced to the HSE, NALA, the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health and the European Journal of Public Health, linked inline, and were checked on 9 November 2026. The survey figures are from 2011, 2015 and 2021, as marked, and the 2021 figures are preliminary. This article is general information, not medical advice, and it does not interpret any result. How exora handles your information is in our privacy policy.