---
title: "A patient's medical history"
summary: "Everything recorded about a patient on one timeline. Add an allergy or a diagnosis, filter a long history down, and correct an entry within seven days."
source: https://practor.app/en-za/help/patients-and-records/a-patients-medical-history
published: 2026-09-16T07:37:19.559Z
updated: 2026-09-29T07:14:52.533Z
category: "Patients and records"
---

**Medical history** is a tab on the patient's record. It draws everything anyone has recorded about them as one timeline, newest first, grouped by day: today and yesterday by name, this week by weekday, anything older by its date. The panel down the left adds entries and narrows what's on screen.

![The medical history tab, with its timeline and the panel beside it](https://res.cloudinary.com/drmnydbcs/image/upload/c_limit,w_1600/f_auto,q_auto:good/v1/help/medical-history/timeline.png?_a=BAMAOGDh0#1440x900 "The panel on the left adds entries and narrows the timeline on the right.")

## Add an entry

**Add entry** at the top of that panel opens a list of seven kinds.

![The Add entry menu, open](https://res.cloudinary.com/drmnydbcs/image/upload/c_limit,w_1600/f_auto,q_auto:good/v1/help/medical-history/add-entry.png?_a=BAMAOGDh0#256x254 "Seven kinds, and an observation covers vitals, labs and social history.")

| | |
| --- | --- |
| Allergy or reaction | Immunization |
| Medication | Observation (Vitals, Labs, Social) |
| Diagnosis or condition | Procedure |
| Family history | |

Choosing one opens its form. **Save** closes it, and the entry appears in the day it belongs to carrying its own labels, so an allergy arrives with its severity and whether it's confirmed.

Observations go through a four-step wizard instead of a single form, because a blood pressure and a social history ask for different things.

## Find something in a long history

The search box takes a name or a code, so **Penicillin** and the code for it both find the same entry.

Under it, five ways to narrow what's drawn:

- **Date range**, from today out to this year, or all time.
- **Record types**, the same seven the Add entry menu offers.
- **Status**: active, resolved, or in progress.
- **Severity**: critical, high, medium or low.
- **Provider**, which separates what your practice recorded from what came from somewhere else.

They stack, and they're all in the address, so a filtered history is a link you can send a colleague. **Clear all filters** appears as soon as anything is set, the search box included.

An empty result says **No records match** rather than looking like a patient with no history.

## Print or export a history

**Print** at the foot of the panel prints what's on screen, filters and all, so narrow the timeline first and you print only that.

**Export** beside it downloads the same history as a PDF, which is what you want when the record has to be attached to an email or filed somewhere. It carries your filters too, and a filtered export says so at the top of the first page, so nobody who opens it later mistakes part of a record for all of it. Each entry lists the date, the kind of record, its status and who wrote it down, and every page is footed with the patient's name.

## Correct an entry

An entry recorded in the last seven days has a **⋮** menu, and **Edit** in it reopens the form the entry was written in.

Seven days is counted from when your practice wrote the entry down, not from the clinical date on it. After that the menu is gone, and correcting something means adding a new entry. The original stays where it is.

## The two dates on an entry

Every entry knows when it was true of the patient and when somebody wrote it down, and those are rarely the same day. A diagnosis made three years ago and entered this morning belongs three years back in the timeline.

Practor groups an entry on its clinical date where there is one. Where there isn't, it groups on the day it was recorded, rather than guessing.

## Related

- [Add a patient](/help/patients-and-records/add-a-patient)
- [Record an encounter](/help/patients-and-records/record-an-encounter)
- [Who can see your records](/help/patients-and-records/who-can-see-my-records)