![]() However, keep in mind that your assessment will last more than 24 hours. It is useful in making the diagnosis but the report is really about what the diagnosis was and what you did about it.Ĭertainly, you need to assess suicidality and explain why you think the patient is not suicidal right now. ![]() Writing about a patient's future plans demonstrates that it mattered more to you than did, say, the check box near "Appearance: Clean." Or the reverse: not writing about the patient's future plans makes it look as though it mattered less to you than his appearance.ĭo not waste too much space on symptom assessment. However, if it was written, it shows that it was more important than something that was not. The maxim "if it wasn't written, it wasn't done" is false. "I was able to conclude that the patient wasn't suicidal because not only was he denying suicidality but his good affect and joking with staff reinforced that he felt better." Instead, make it obvious what you were thinking. The problem with this listing of the facts is that the clinician is forcing the reader to connect the dots. Consider the following objective: "Patient denied suicidal ideations. You must write your assessment and plan in a way that makes it completely obvious to others why you did what you did.Ī common, and I believe mistaken, approach is to force the reader to infer that the patient was not suicidal by simply listing specific behaviors, actions, or statements in the objective portion without interpreting these behaviors in the assessment section. Certainly, objective facts are important to list, but the strength of the report comes from explicitly describing your thought process while drawing conclusions about the patient. But other doctors, lawyers, and jurors will care about the assessment and plan sections. Who is going to read this report? Perhaps insurance companies will read the objective section and use it to bill accordingly. The biggest mistake in medical note writing is spending too much time or using too many words in the "objective" section and not enough in the "assessment" section. Write so the reader does not have to guess what you were thinking See the Table for key points addressed here.Ĭonducting an assessment and writing a report are 2 different processes. Should two thirds of the H&P be devoted to symptomatology-assessing for depression and the like-and one third to the assessment and plan? In addition, within any section, what needs to be written explicitly and what can be left out? In this article I offer 9 maxims to help focus the writing, using the model of an emergency department (ED) setting to illustrate. This article is about documentation and prioritizing the information contained in the report.ĭuring the patient interview, the clinician will learn far more than he or she can include in the report how do you decide what is important for posterity? It is unreasonable and disingenuous to assume that every H&P will be a thorough and rigorous journalistic recording of the facts, events, and thought processes that occurred during the interview. This article is not about how to perform a suicide assessment it is assumed the clinician is already able to do this, or knows where to go for assistance. The result is an adverse judgment, settlement, or the immense frustration of a lawsuit that could have been avoided with different (and more focused) documentation. As a forensic psychiatrist, I have seen reports that fail to convey the rigor, time, and thoughtfulness that went into the work because, although lengthy, the content was not prioritized. Unfortunately, psychiatrists receive comparatively little practical guidance in documenting the history and physical examination (H&P) of a suicidal patient. Proper suicide assessment is probably the most important part of a clinician's job appropriately, heavy emphasis is placed on this in our education.
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