Psychiatry Progress Note Template

Standardize your note-taking using our psychiatry progress note template, specially designed to save psychiatrists time and keep their notes organized. 

By Alex King on Mar 06, 2024.

Fact Checked by RJ Gumban.

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What is a Psychiatry Progress Notes Template?

A template is a tool for psychiatrists to use with their patients at appointments following their initial consultation. Psychiatrists may see their patients on a short or long term basis depending on their progress, and having a written record of the patient’s progress between sessions with their psychiatrist is an important clinical decision making tool.

The psychiatry progress notes template provides a structure for the progress notes, standardizing the progress note taking process. This template can be used as a PDF or from within the Carepatron platform, and while we recommend storing the completed template digitally, you can also print it out and fill it in by hand if you prefer.

Free Psychiatry Progress Note Template

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

How to Use This Progress Note Template for Psychiatry

It’s easy to start using this psychiatric progress note template in your psychiatry practice. Just follow these simple steps:

Download the PDF

Step one is to download the free PDF resource and save it locally so you can edit it digitally. Alternatively, you can print it out and fill it in by hand, or use the version of the template available within Carepatron. Check out the explainer video on this page for help doing this.

Fill in your patient details

As with any medical document, ensure you include your patient’s name, date of birth, optional identifier, and date of your session.

Medication Review

The medication review section is designed to separate specific information relating to your patient’s medication regime, schedule, and response from the rest of the progress notes. Include any side-effects they have experienced, their self-reporting of their response to the medication, their reported compliance, and any changes you recommend to their medication.

Progress Notes

This is the biggest section in this note as it includes the body of your psychiatric progress notes on your patient. Include any pertinent details of their progress since their last session with you.

Additional Notes

We have included space for any additional notes you may need to take, such as for co-ordination of care, ordering tests, results, follow-up appointments, or resources provided. 

Sign and store securely

The last step is to sign the psychiatric progress note and store it in a HIPAA-compliant way to ensure the security of your patient’s sensitive medical information. 

Psychiatry Progress Notes Example (Sample)

Psychiatry progress notes will look different depending on the practitioner’s note taking style, the patient, and how long they have been seeing them. However, it can be helpful to understand how to use this resource by seeing a finished version. To aid your understanding, we have provided a sample psychiatry progress note, completed using this template.

Download this Psychiatry Progress Notes Example here: 

Psychiatry Progress Notes Example

Who Can Use this Psychiatry Template?

This psychiatry progress notes template was designed for use by psychiatrists, but could also be used by:

  • Primary-care physicians
  • Psychiatric mental health nurses
  • Psychiatric residents or trainee doctors

Or anyone else who can legally make adjustments to a patient’s medication schedule. Additionally, medical transcriptionists who routinely type psychiatrist letters may choose to use this template to structure the practitioner’s notes if they have specified this prior.

Why is This Template Useful For Psychiatrists?

Shareability 

Your psychiatric progress notes may need to be shared with other members of your patient’s care team such as nurses, their primary medical practitioner, or other mental health workers. As such, having a clearly laid out template that others can quickly interpret and use makes life easier for everyone. 

Improve Organization

Templates help to standardize your psychiatric practice. By using the same progress note template each time you have a follow-up appointment, you can help to ensure you are providing a consistent service to all of your patients. 

Save time formatting

We have done all the formatting for you in this free PDF download, just fill in the headings and you will have a well-formatted and professionally presented psychiatric progress note.

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Why Use Carepatron For Psychiatry Notes?

Carepatron provides a state-of-the-art, integrated solution for psychiatric practice management. Follow-up appointment scheduling, further communication with your patient, and other actionable tasks resulting from a patient’s psychiatric progress notes can all be easily completed from within Carepatron’s comprehensive practice management software.

You can access patient data, complete your clinical documentation and store your progress notes from our mobile or desktop platform. Using Carepatron for psychiatric progress notes also minimizes the time you spend transferring information between different systems, as everything you need is securely stored in one place.

Bring your psychiatric practice into the 21st century by automating your email or SMS appointment reminders for your clients, or dictating your notes with Carepatron’s AI-powered voice-to-text software. Carepatron is designed to save you time, streamline your administration tasks, and help your psychiatric practice provide the best service for your patients.

Psychiatry Note Software
What should a psychiatric progress note include?
What should a psychiatric progress note include?

Commonly asked questions

What should a psychiatric progress note include?

A psychiatric progress note should include all relevant updates on your patient’s condition since their last appointment with you. This might include responses to medication, subjective reports of their mood or behavior since the last time they saw you, their compliance with medication, and any proposed changes to their treatment plan.

How long should my progress note be?

Progress notes are designed to be concise updates at each follow-up appointment following an initial consultation. As such, if a particular detail is unchanged or irrelevant to the patient’s progress, it can be omitted or noted as “no change”.

Where do I write my patient’s full medical history?

Your patient’s full medical history is generally taken in their initial consultation with you. As these progress notes are designed for appointments following their initial consultation, we don’t recommend you note down your patient’s entire history in this progress notes template. Instead, your patient’s interval history, i.e. their history since the last time they saw you, should be documented including their interval medication history, and results of any additional psychiatric examinations or mental status examinations.

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