Documenting so it survives

Contemporaneous, specific, and showing the change.

Consultation records need to establish who was consulted, in what capacity, when, what they said, and what followed. Records commonly capture the first three and summarise the fourth as supportive, which loses everything of value.

The most useful record is a short note per conversation capturing the substance, including disagreement, written at the time. Attendance lists and signed letters supplement it and cannot replace it, because they establish presence rather than content.

Reconstruction after the fact is both unreliable and, if presented as contemporaneous, a much more serious problem than a thin record. Where records were not kept, the correct response is to say so and to establish the practice going forward.

The change log is the part most often missing and most often asked for: which course changes were made in response to which input, with dates. That single document answers the question the whole record exists to answer.

The other documentation worth keeping is the raw material rather than only the summary. Notes from a conversation, in the participant's own words, are far more useful two years later than a synthesised finding, because the synthesis discarded whatever did not fit the conclusion being reached at the time.