Documentation Hack

Text Replacement

I love a good hack to make my life easier.

I see 20-30 clients/week. That means 20-30 notes per week. I have asked the questions “how can I make my documentation easier?” and “how can I stay caught up on notes?” I usually got the same answers “do your notes right after session” or “don’t type as much.” My problem with doing them right after session has always been that my brain is “too full.” I struggle to put a coherent sentence together in writing. So I started focusing on the second suggestion. What I found was that I was typing the same information all the time. Then I found “Text Replacement!”

Instead of typing out the same thing time after time (like “Counselor used CBT strategies to explore, identify and challenge maladaptive thoughts/beliefs/emotions. Counselor challenged client to identify adaptive reframes/disputes/challenges to maladaptive thoughts/beliefs/emotions”) I created a replacement text.

I went to settings>keyboard>text replacement, then clicked the (+) sign to add a new text replacement. I chose qqcbt as the text I wanted to replace. I chose the text “Counselor used CBT strategies to explore, idetify and challenge maladaptive thoughts/beliefs/emotions. Counselor challenged client to identify adaptive reframes/disputes/challenges to maladaptive thoughts/beliefs/emotions. “ as the replacement. I add the qq to the beginning of all of my replacement words so I can still use the original word in other applications. For example: if I want to suggest a CBT intervention to an intern or a client, I want to be able to type CBT without the auto text replacement. By adding the qq to the beginning, It makes it more unique.

I use this for my email address, client portal, and lots of other commonly used phrases.

A word of caution though, this is not mean to be a full note. You still need to specify any tools, client responses, outcomes, etc. This just helps with the wording that is going to be the same.

I hope this is as helpful for you as it has been for me!