Contents
InsightsJournal and publisher policy
Policy briefGlobal
The CARE Checklist Asks for Two Things Most Case Reports Leave Out
CARE is the reporting guideline for case reports: a 13-item checklist covering what a case report has to contain. Two of its items are the ones most manuscripts arrive without — a timeline of the episode, and the patient’s perspective in the patient’s own account. A third, informed consent, is a reported item in its own right rather than a form filed with the journal (Gagnier et al., 2013).
- 13 items
- Timeline is an item
- Patient perspective is an item
- Consent is reported, not just filed
- 2013 checklist is current
- Instrument
- The CARE guidelines: consensus-based clinical case reporting guideline development
- Issued by
- The CARE Group
- Current checklist
- The 2013 CARE Checklist. It is the only English checklist offered on the issuing body’s own downloads page.
- Explanation document
- Published 2017, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
- Applies to
- Case reports in clinical medicine
- What you must do
- Report against the 13 items: title, keywords, abstract, introduction, patient information, clinical findings, timeline, diagnostic assessment, therapeutic intervention, follow-up and outcomes, discussion, patient perspective, informed consent.
- Primary source
- The CARE guidelines: consensus-based clinical case reporting guideline development
The CARE Group · read 8 October 2026
In force Global
What this policy is, in plain words.
A case report is the oldest form in medicine and the least standardised. CARE is the attempt to fix that: a 13-item checklist produced by a 27-participant consensus process, setting out what a reader needs in order to judge a single case.
The 13 items are: title, keywords, abstract, introduction, patient information, clinical findings, timeline, diagnostic assessment, therapeutic intervention, follow-up and outcomes, discussion, patient perspective, and informed consent.
The timeline is the item that most improves a weak case report. A case told in prose almost always loses the order of events — what was given when, what changed first, how long the gap was between presentation and diagnosis. A timeline makes the causal claim checkable, and it is usually the point at which the author discovers the claim is weaker than they thought.
The patient perspective is the item most often skipped. It asks for the patient’s own account of the episode. It is not decoration: in a single-case report the patient is the entire sample, and their account of what happened is data.
Informed consent is a reported item, not merely a form in the editorial file. The checklist expects the paper to say that consent was obtained, which lines up with the ICMJE’s position on identifiable material.
Why it exists.
Case reports carry an unusual evidential burden. They are the first signal of a new adverse effect, a rare presentation or an unexpected response, and they are also the weakest design in medicine. Standardised reporting is what lets a reader tell those apart.
The checklist is also what makes a case report findable and poolable later. Structured items — a stated timeline, named interventions, recorded outcomes — are what allow a series of scattered single cases to be collected into something that can be analysed when a pattern emerges.
One thing to be accurate about: the CARE Group’s own site says the guidelines have been “endorsed by multiple medical journals and publishers” and does not name them. So this brief does not name them either. Check your target journal’s instructions, where the requirement, if there is one, will be stated.
What you have to do.
Five steps for a case report that will survive review
Do the timeline first. Of the thirteen items it is the one that most often changes what the case report actually says, and doing it after the prose is written means rewriting the prose.
Who and what it reaches.
What it reaches — by subject, by the people it falls on, and by territory.
Subjects
Case reports across clinical specialties
The checklist is not specialty-specific. Extensions exist for particular contexts; check the EQUATOR Network record for one that fits.
Population
The single patient, who is the whole sample
Which is why the patient’s own perspective is a checklist item and not an optional extra.
Countries
No territorial limit
A reporting standard adopted by journals rather than a national rule.
Which journals apply it, and how.
What we can and cannot tell you. The CARE Group states that the guidelines have been endorsed by multiple medical journals and publishers, and names none of them on its own pages. We are not going to supply a list it does not give.
What the record does show is that the guideline was published simultaneously in seven journals in 2013, among them BMJ Case Reports and the Journal of Medical Case Reports. Beyond that, the reliable move is to read your target journal’s instructions for authors, which is where a requirement to submit a completed CARE checklist will appear if there is one.
The questions people actually ask.
Not in English, on the CARE Group’s own downloads page, which offers the 2013 CARE Checklist. An explanation and elaboration document followed in 2017. The EQUATOR Network record was last updated on 16 February 2026 and gives no new version number.
The patient’s own account of the episode and its outcome, in their words where possible. How the illness presented to them, what the treatment was like, what has changed since. If the patient cannot provide it, say why rather than omitting the item silently.
Detailed enough that a reader can reconstruct the order of events and the intervals between them without inference. Dates or relative days, the clinical events, the interventions, the responses. A table or a figure is usually clearer than a paragraph.
No. Item 13 asks you to report that consent was obtained. The journal separately requires the consent itself — often on its own form, and for BMJ Case Reports without exception. They are two different obligations that happen to concern the same act.
1BEFORE SUBMISSIONwhile the choices are still open
Journal selectionJournals whose own policies your manuscript can actually satisfy, decided from the manuscript.Medical writingThe manuscript written to the reporting guideline and the journal’s own conditions together.Sources
Every claim above rests on one of these. Each was read on the date shown; a policy can move after that.
- 1Gagnier, J. J., et al. (2013). The CARE guidelines: Consensus-based clinical case reporting guideline development. Hosted by the CARE Group. States the 13-item checklist and the 27-participant consensus process.
https://www.care-statement.org/s/2013-CARE-Guidelines-BMJ-CR.pdf Read 8 October 2026. - 2The CARE Group. (n.d.). CARE statement. The downloads page offers the 2013 CARE Checklist as the current English checklist. The pages carry no date.
https://www.care-statement.org Read 8 October 2026. - 3EQUATOR Network. (2026, February 16). The CARE guidelines. Reporting guideline record, last updated on this date.
https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/care/ Read 8 October 2026.
CAREcase reportsreporting guidelinespatient perspectivetimelinephysicians
Your next step
Does this rule reach your work?
- 1Check whether it binds the work you have in hand
- 2Put the obligation where the deadline will be met
- 3Keep the evidence that you did
Or read how a compliance statement is checked, on the compliance statement checking page.
More in Journal and publisher policy
How to cite this article
Pick your referencing style and copy it. Your university or target journal may vary the punctuation — check its guide if it has one.
Pubrica Insights. (2026, October 8). The CARE Checklist Asks for Two Things Most Case Reports Leave Out. Pubrica. https://pubrica.com/insights/care-guideline-case-reports/
Pubrica Insights. “The CARE Checklist Asks for Two Things Most Case Reports Leave Out.” Pubrica, 8 Oct. 2026, pubrica.com/insights/care-guideline-case-reports/.
Pubrica Insights (2026) The CARE Checklist Asks for Two Things Most Case Reports Leave Out. Pubrica. Available at: https://pubrica.com/insights/care-guideline-case-reports/ (Accessed: 15 October 2026).
Pubrica Insights. “The CARE Checklist Asks for Two Things Most Case Reports Leave Out.” Pubrica. October 8, 2026. https://pubrica.com/insights/care-guideline-case-reports/
Pubrica Insights, ‘The CARE Checklist Asks for Two Things Most Case Reports Leave Out’ (Pubrica, 8 October 2026) <https://pubrica.com/insights/care-guideline-case-reports/> accessed 15 October 2026.
Pubrica Insights. The CARE Checklist Asks for Two Things Most Case Reports Leave Out. [Internet]. Pubrica; 2026 Oct 8 [cited 2026 Oct 15]. Available from: https://pubrica.com/insights/care-guideline-case-reports/
Pubrica Insights, “The CARE Checklist Asks for Two Things Most Case Reports Leave Out,” Pubrica, Oct. 8, 2026. [Online]. Available: https://pubrica.com/insights/care-guideline-case-reports/
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author = {{Pubrica Insights}},
title = {The CARE Checklist Asks for Two Things Most Case Reports Leave Out},
howpublished = {Pubrica},
year = {2026},
month = {oct},
url = {https://pubrica.com/insights/care-guideline-case-reports/},
note = {Accessed: <span data-cite-acc="iso">2026-10-15</span>}
}This article is written to be learned from. Cite it if you are referring to what it says, and cite the original sources for any evidence you take from it.