Osteoarthritis pain diary

Osteoarthritis comes with good and bad spells. This template records which joint is affected, how long it's stiff in the morning and how much you asked of it that day.

Osteoarthritis pain diary

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What to track, and why

Osteoarthritis pain often follows load: after a long walk, on the stairs, after gardening. On top of that come morning stiffness and the occasional swelling. Tracking this over weeks lets you show how your symptoms change, for example after starting physiotherapy or switching painkillers.

Which joint

Knee, hip, hand, shoulder. If several joints hurt, use one row per joint rather than lumping them together.

Morning stiffness

How many minutes until the joint moves freely again? A simple number that says a lot about how things are going.

The day's load

Stairs, a walk, gardening, sitting for hours. You'll see which activity does you good and which was too much.

Weather

Many people with osteoarthritis say they feel changes in the weather. Whether that's true for you only shows up once you've tracked it for a few weeks.

Columns in this template

  • Time hh:mm
  • Joint knee, hip, hand …
  • Severity 0–10
  • Stiffness minutes in the morning
  • Swelling yes / no
  • Load stairs, walking, gardening …
  • Weather cold, damp, warm
  • Medication name, dose, time
  • What helped? heat, rest, movement …

How to fill it in

  1. Print page 1 once a week, and page 2 once a week for your review.
  2. Write things down close to when they happen, not in the evening from memory.
  3. Stick to one scale: 0 is no pain, 10 is the worst pain you can imagine.
  4. Blank boxes are fine. A short, honest entry beats a perfect one you reconstruct later.

Then what? Making use of your filled-in sheets

Most templates stop at the filling-in part. But the value comes afterwards, when lots of rows turn into a few clear statements.

  1. Sum up each week

    At the weekend, fill in page 2: days with pain, worst score, days you took painkillers. It takes five minutes and saves a lot of page-flipping at the appointment.

  2. Compare after four weeks

    Lay the weekly reviews side by side. Does anything repeat, a weekday, an activity, a trigger? Mark it, but don't jump to conclusions: a pattern isn't proof of a cause.

  3. Three numbers for your appointment

    Before you go, write at the top of the first sheet: how many days a month you had pain, how strong it was on average, and what you couldn't do because of it. Those three lines make a good opening.

  4. Take the sheets, keep a copy

    Bring the originals and take a photo first. After any change in treatment, comparing old and new sheets shows whether anything has changed.

When paper gets too much

Paper is a good start. The tedious part is the analysis: adding up weeks, looking for patterns, sorting sheets. That's exactly what PainTrack does for you.

  • Log an entry in seconds on your own scale: 0–10, yes/no or mild/moderate/severe
  • Add circumstances, body location and medication to an entry, with reminders
  • Your trend chart and weekly trends update by themselves
  • With Pro: trigger analysis and a ready-made PDF report for your doctor
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This template helps you document your symptoms. It doesn't diagnose anything and is not a substitute for medical advice. If you have new, very severe or unusual symptoms, contact a doctor, or call your local emergency number in an emergency.

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External pages from health services, medical societies and patient organisations. We are not affiliated with any of them.

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