Free tool · Scarlet Beast En español →
My emergency card
If you were hurt, lost, or too overwhelmed to speak, what would a stranger trying to help you need to know? This page turns your answers into a card for your wallet and a one-page sheet for home: who to call, your allergies and medicines, and how to help you. It takes about ten minutes, and every box is optional.
Good to know before you print it
Anyone who finds it can read it
A card only works because it can be read without asking you. That also means whoever picks up your wallet can read it. Put on it what you would want a stranger helping you to know, and leave the rest off. We left out a box for a Social Security number on purpose.
Where to keep it
Some ideas: the card next to your ID, a second one in a bag or coat you use a lot, the sheet on the fridge or by the front door, and a copy with one of the people on it. We can’t promise that someone helping you will look for a card or find it, so tell the people close to you where it is.
Your phone may be able to show this too
Google’s Android help page says you can add medical information and emergency contacts in the Safety app, and choose Show when locked; it also warns that anyone who picks up the phone can then see it (Google: Get help during an emergency with your Android phone, read 2026-10-03). For iPhone, Apple’s guide has a page called Set up and view your Medical ID; Apple’s site terms do not allow automated tools to read its pages, so we do not describe its steps here. A paper card still works when a phone is dead, locked or lost.
Keep it true
An out-of-date card can mislead the person reading it. The date is printed on it. Change the card when a medicine, a phone number or a diagnosis changes, and copy medicine names and amounts from the label rather than from memory.
It is not a legal document
This card tells people things; it does not give anyone the power to decide for you, and nobody is required to follow it. For wishes about mental health treatment, see the psychiatric advance directive builder. For a plan for hard nights, see the safety plan.
Making one for someone else
You can fill this in for a child, a parent or someone you care for. If they can take part, make it with them: it is their information, and they get a say in what a stranger learns about them.
More free tools like this
- Speak for me: a message board and a card for when words won’t come.
- Get ready for your appointment: one page to hand your doctor.
- Safety plan: what to do, and who to call, when things get dark.
- How I work: a one-page guide to you, for a boss, a teacher or a team.
- First aid, fast: what to do in the first minutes of an emergency.
- Save these tools on your phone so they open without a signal.
The page, its choices and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). The ready-made lines are our own wording, not a medical standard. Also in Spanish: Mi tarjeta de emergencia, which can print the card in Spanish or in English; what you type here shows up there too, on this same device. Found a mistake, or a line we should add? Email [email protected].