An adjuster reading your medical records is looking for one thing, which is a continuous account of the injury. When it started, how it changed, what treatment you had and what it kept you from doing.
That is an ordinary step in a claim rather than something to brace for. Knowing what gets read lets you take part in it properly instead of waiting to find out afterwards.
What is an adjuster actually reading?
Not how much it hurt. There is no field on any form for that, which can feel wrong when the pain is the whole of what you are living through.
What gets read is a sequence. When the symptoms began, how they changed from one week to the next, what treatment you had and when you had it, and what the injury kept you from doing at work and at home.
Every part of that sequence is built from dated entries. Your file is a series of dated points, one for each appointment, and the sequence is the shape those points make when somebody lines them up.
Why does a gap in treatment change how a file reads?
Because a file with nothing in it for three weeks looks the same as three weeks when nothing was wrong.
That is not anyone being unfair to you. It is simply what a record is. Nothing was written down, so nothing is there, and a reader has no way to tell an empty stretch from a well one.
Gaps happen for ordinary reasons. Childcare, a shift you could not afford to miss, a clinic with no appointments for two weeks, a stretch when you felt better and stopped going. None of that is a failing on your part. What closes the gap is a note in your own hand saying what those weeks were actually like.
What does a complete record look like?
Five things, and only the last one depends on you alone.
| What it contains | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|
| The date of the collision and how it happened | Anchors every symptom that follows to a starting point |
| Symptoms from the first appointment onward | Shows how the injury developed rather than how it looked on one day |
| Treatment with dates attached | A week with nothing in it reads as a week without symptoms |
| Work missed and daily activities affected | Turns pain into something another person can measure |
| Your own daily notes beside the clinical file | Covers the days when nobody else was writing anything down |
The first four are built by other people. Doctors, physiotherapists, employers. The fifth is the one nobody hands you, and it is the one that fills the space between everything else.
Does what I say at each appointment matter?
Yes, and more than most of the paperwork around it.
What you tell a clinician becomes the clinical note, and the clinical note is what gets read later. If you say you are fine because it is a Tuesday and you would rather not go into it, fine is what goes into the file.
This is not about overstating anything. It is about being accurate on a day when you would rather think about something else. If your shoulder has been at a six all week and today happens to be a four, say both. The week is the useful information and the four on its own is misleading.
What if I had a problem with that shoulder before?
Say so, and say it early.
A previous injury does not cancel a new one. What it does is raise a question about which part of your current pain belongs to which, and that question is much easier to answer when the earlier problem is on the record from the start rather than surfacing months later.
The detail that carries the weight is what changed. If you had occasional stiffness and now you cannot reach a top shelf, that difference is the injury. Write down what you could do before and what you cannot do now, and the comparison does the work for you.
What if my record already has gaps in it?
Start from today.
You cannot go back and create appointments that did not happen. What you can do is begin a record from this point forward, and write down what you remember of the gap, marked clearly as remembered rather than recorded at the time.
That distinction works in your favour. A note reading "written today, recalling the first two weeks of last month" is honest, and it reads as honest. Reconstructing two weeks and presenting them as though they were written at the time does the opposite.
If you were a passenger rather than the driver, you may be starting with very little on file at all. Our piece on whether a passenger has a claim covers where to begin. If your scans came back clear and you are still sore, proving a soft tissue injury without a scan explains what stands in for imaging.
What your care team does with it
Your medical team will ask how things have been since your last visit. It is a hard question to answer well, because the worst moment of the week is the one that stays with you and it crowds out the days that were manageable.
Handing over a week of dated entries changes that conversation. Your physiotherapist can see which movements are improving and which are not, and can adjust what you are working on rather than starting from a general impression. Those same notes are the ones your claim is built from later, but the first thing they do is make your treatment better.
Deadlines for reporting a collision and for applying for benefits are set separately by each province and territory, and some of them are short. Our page on the first 72 hours sets out what needs to happen early on.
Hurt Square publishes recovery guides for you to document your injury and recovery. The National MVA Recovery Guide works anywhere in Canada, and the Companion Guide for your province adds the deadlines, forms and contacts that apply where you live. The two are built to be used together.
Last verified: August 2026
