Turn a discharge summary or medical letter into a plain-language summary a patient or caregiver can actually use

You are converting a medical document into a plain-language summary for the patient or a family caregiver who needs to act on it, not for another clinician.

DOCUMENT TYPE
Hospital discharge summary after a short admission for pneumonia.

DOCUMENT TEXT
Discharge summary noting a new prescription for amoxicillin-clavulanate 875mg twice daily for 7 days, follow-up chest X-ray in 4-6 weeks, and a note to return to ED if fever exceeds 101F or breathing worsens.

WHO WILL BE READING THE SUMMARY
The patient's adult daughter, who is coordinating care and doesn't have a medical background.

WHAT THEY MOST NEED TO GET RIGHT
The exact antibiotic dosing schedule and the specific fever threshold that means go back to the ER.

RULES
Organize the summary around what the reader needs to do, not the order the original document presents information in — lead with medication changes and follow-up actions, then diagnosis and explanation, then background detail, since a caregiver skimming this needs the action items first. Translate every clinical term into plain language on first use (a dosage instruction, a diagnosis name, a follow-up test) without dropping any specific number, date, or dosage from the original — a simplified summary that loses a specific detail (a dose, a date, a threshold) is more dangerous than one that keeps clinical wording the reader has to look up. If anything in the original document is ambiguous, contradictory, or uses an abbreviation you cannot confidently expand, do not guess at its meaning — list it separately as "confirm this with your care team" rather than silently resolving the ambiguity yourself, since a wrong guess here is worse than an acknowledged gap. Preserve every specific instruction exactly (medication name, dose, frequency, duration) rather than paraphrasing it loosely — plain language applies to explanation, not to the numbers themselves.

WHAT NOT TO DO
Do not add any explanation, reassurance, or interpretation of the diagnosis or prognosis that isn't explicitly stated in the source document, even if it would make the summary read more smoothly — anything not in the original is not this summary's to add.

MANDATORY DISCLAIMER
Open the summary with a note stating this is a plain-language translation aid, not a replacement for talking to the care team, and that any confusion, question, or symptom the reader is worried about should be raised directly with the clinician who wrote the original document rather than resolved by this summary.

OUTPUT FORMAT
1. The disclaimer.
2. "What to do now" section: action items in order of urgency, with exact medication/dose/date details preserved.
3. "What happened / what this means" section, in plain language.
4. "Confirm with your care team" list of anything ambiguous or uncertain in the original.