Help your doctor to write good reports

In a FECA case, OWCP always expects your doctor to write narrative reports that discuss how you were injured and explain how that event caused or aggravated your medical condition. Many people receive letters from OWCP telling them that their doctor did not provide a sufficiently rationalized report or otherwise did not explain how their work activity caused or aggravated the medical condition(s) at issue. Frequently, someone in this situation then provides me with copies of reports from their doctor starting out with a background such as "Mrs Jones returns, her shoulder is killing her, examining her shoulder I find..."

A doctor is trained to walk into the exam room, ask you what problem you are having, dictate this into her notes, and then go on and examine you, and complete the treatment note or report based upon the exam. The problem here is that the doctor is just putting down what you told her.

When you are in the exam room and the doctor comes in and greets you, you must provide a brief summary of your injury. The doctor is not their for a social visit, you need to provide a brief factual summary of your situation such as: "Nice to see you doctor, I was injured on xx/xx/xxxx, when xxxx happened, I felt xxxx symptoms, since then I have had xxxx treatment. I still have xxxx symptoms." You get maybe 20-30 seconds of the doctor's attention, USE IT. Once you have given this brief summary of just the facts, the doctor should dictate this into her notes and go on and complete the exam. Now when OWCP sees your treatment note, it will start out with a summary of how you got hurt and what has happened since.