When you’re injured in accidents involving a car, a bike, dangerous conditions on a workplace or public premises, and more, it’s important for you to focus on getting better. At the time, you might not be too worried about the financial aspects of your accident.
However, medical expenses can rack up quickly, and in cases where someone else is to blame for your accident, having documentation of the accident (and the expenses) is critical. For this post, we want to introduce you to the concept of a personal injury journal.
Documentation Helps You Recover What is Rightfully Yours
To put it in simple terms, a personal injury journal is a document or set of documents where you record key details of your personal injury. It serves as supporting documentation that demonstrates how the accident happened, what expenses you’ve incurred, who was involved, and more.
The utility of a personal injury journal comes from the fact that you’re regularly updating it while things are still fresh on your mind. While you can piece together a given incident with things such as photos and receipts, you lose a lot of vital details that weren’t recorded from the get-go. By keeping a personal injury journal right from the beginning, this helps you track vital information.
We’ve seen this time and time again: personal injury claims with robust documentation usually lead to bigger awards that more accurately cover all involved expenses. Without proof, it’s harder for you to claim what you rightfully deserve.
What to Include in a Personal Injury Journal
We recommend that you start your personal injury immediately after your accident, or as soon as you can get to it. Whether you keep it in a notebook, as a scrapbook, in a virtual document, or whatever format works for you, these are some of the details you’ll want to include:
- Your recollection of how the accident occurred
- Details on who was involved
- Details on any witnesses that were present
- Specific times and dates of events such as the accident, hospital visits, and more
- Medical records
- Police records
- All communications between yourself and medical professionals
- All communications between yourself and the insurance companies
One other thing to note: You’ll want to present the info contained in your journal when in court and during other various key steps of the personal injury claim process. This means that everything you store in your personal injury journal should be considered public.
Learn More About How Our Personal Injury Attorneys Can Help
Having a personal injury journal is a concrete step towards securing the compensation that is owed. The next step should be for you to reach out to a skilled personal injury attorney, someone who can represent your interests in court and work tirelessly to help get you back on your feet.
Contact the Law Offices of Dean Petrulakis for a free initial consultation with one of our reputable personal injury attorneys! Give us a call today at (209) 528-0404 to learn more about how we can help.