Guides

Your treatment history

These pages include way to record a summary of your HIV medical history.

These have been taken from the i-Base Treatment Passport which is available free from i-Base. If you’d like a copy please call 208 616 2210 or order online.

Keeping a record of your treatment history can:

  • Help you understand your health and treatment.
  • Help if your doctor changes at your clinic.
  • Help empower you to manage your own treatment.
  • Help if you speak to other health care workers or to a treatment advocate for advice.
  • Help if you ever change hospitals or clinics, if you want a second opinion, when on holiday or abroad or if you move to another country.

Any treatment choice for your future care is closely linked to your previous treatment history.

This includes results from blood tests like the CD4 count, viral load and resistance tests, as well as the history of drugs you have used and your reasons for changing them.

As treatment improves you could need this record for 20 years or more. Whether new treatments work will depend on your previous treatment history.

This record is important. If you change clinic you should ask for your medical records to be forwarded. Because this does not always happen or is delayed, make sure that you have a record of your hospital or clinic number.

These pages will help provide a useful record in all these situations.

Your doctor can provide you with details to help fill in these pages but it does not replace your medical notes.

All patients have the right to see their medical records. You can also make photocopies but you need to let the clinic know beforehand.

If you are changing clinics it is sometimes easier to take a summary copy of your notes with you.

Last updated: 1 June 2022.