Clinical Progress Notes Template

A clearly formatted template for your patient’s clinical progress notes in an easy-to-use PDF format.

By Emma Hainsworth on Mar 06, 2024.

Fact Checked by Ericka Pingol.

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What is a Clinical Progress Notes Template?

Clinical progress notes are an important tool to track the progress of your patients over time. They consist of multiple entries over different sessions or encounters with your patient, and are invaluable for informing clinical decision-making as well as for keeping well-organized and comprehensive clinical documentation.

Our clinical progress notes template makes it easy to organize your clinical progress notes. This template is a blank slate with enough structure to ensure you can keep your notes organized, but enough customizability to ensure whatever method of note-taking you prefer can be accommodated.

This resource is a downloadable, interactive PDF that you can either fill out digitally, or print out and fill in by hand. The provided template is a framework for you to standardize your clinical progress notes, allowing you to reduce the time spent formatting notes and increase the time spent tending to your patients.

Printable Clinical Progress Notes Template

Check out these progress note templates for clinicians to improve clinical documentation, productivity, and treatment outcomes.

How to Use this Clinical Progress Notes Template PDF

It couldn’t be simpler to use our simple clinical progress notes template. Just follow these easy steps to start taking your clinical progress notes.

Fill in the patient details

This is a very important section and it is crucial to check for spelling errors or alternatives in the patient’s name, or optional identifier.

Add the date and time

Including the date and time in the clinical progress in your note is important for creating a clear picture of your patient’s progress. We have included a date and time column for this reason. 

Write your clinical progress note entry

Add in the update you wish to make in the Notes column, try to keep it concise, legible and at a level that can be understood by those who will be sharing these clinical progress notes.

Sign the clinical progress note

For legal purposes, and for traceability, add your signature at the bottom of the document if you have not already done so. 

Store your progress notes securely

As clinical progress notes serve as part of your patient’s medical record, you have a legal obligation to store your clinical progress notes safely and securely under HIPAA. 

Clinical Progress Notes Example (Sample)

Clinical progress notes will look very different from patient to patient, but to show you what this template might look like once it’s finished, we have created an example clinical progress note.

Have a look at the sample clinical progress notes here:

Clinical Progress Notes Example

Who Can Use this Clinical Progress Notes Template?

Clinical progress notes can be used by any clinicians who see patients independently on a long-term basis. This might be:

  • Clinical psychologists or counselors
  • Psychiatrists
  • Massage therapists, occupational therapists or physiotherapists
  • Nurses and nurse practitioners
  • Specialist physicians
  • General practitioners 

And many more!

We have kept this template broad enough so it can be used by a whole range of clinicians. Anyone who needs to routinely take progress notes for their patients can benefit from using our clinical progress notes template. Additionally, students or trainees in a clinical discipline may find this template a useful tool for developing their progress note-taking skills.

Why is This Template Useful for Clinicians?

Saves Time

This template saves you time designing, formatting, and drawing up your own clinical progress notes table. The clinical progress notes template also helps clinicians track the important updates on their patients using the Date/Time column.

Make sharing simple

Clinicians often have to share their notes with other specialists, healthcare workers, or other third parties, and ensuring their clinical progress notes are clearly set out and readable will help to improve the coordination of care for their patients.

Keep your clinical progress notes organized

Having separate documents for every progress note, regardless of how concise they may be, can lead to losing certain days or losing track of the order of your notes. By using a template with a section for the date and time, as well as five entries per page, you won’t need to worry about organizing an endless stack of pages again!

Clinician software feedback

Why Use Carepatron For Clinical Progress Notes?

Software like Carepatron offers an easy-to-use, HIPAA-compliant method for you to electronically store your clinical progress notes. Carepatron is a fantastically integrated practice management software designed to save you time, keep your practice organized, and improve your coordination of care for your patients. Carepatron also offers you a vast library of templates for use in your practice, and much more!

Picture this, you access your calendar from within Carepatron and see your appointments for the day laid out clearly with customizable tags. Head to your client’s profile within Carepatron to access all their documentation, including the clinical progress note template you began the previous session. Once their session is over, you open up the template again and use Carepatron’s smart voice-to-text software to dictate the update to their progress notes for today and securely save the note. Manage your client’s billing and follow-up appointment from the billing and appointments tabs in Carepatron, and get on with seeing patients!

Clinical Progress Note Software
What is the “Clinician Designation” in this template?
What is the “Clinician Designation” in this template?

Commonly asked questions

What is the “Clinician Designation” in this template?

The designation is where you write your job title as a clinician. This is useful for others who may read your notes to give context to your observations.

What do I include in a clinical progress note?

This will depend on your role in the patient’s care team, and your personal style of note-taking. Things to include might be vital signs, what you observe about the patient’s behavior or presentation during your interaction, what you did during this patient encounter, the results of any examination or test, and any other relevant details.

Why are there multiple rows in this template?

The different rows in this template are designed for you to take chronological progress notes for the same patient. You may see your patient once a week, so each row could be reserved for each week. Alternatively, you may see your patient intermittently and so having a column for the date and time will help you to keep the chronology of your patient’s development well organized.

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