For Clinical Social Workers ·
What you'll accomplish
By the end of this guide, you'll have ChatGPT Plus set up with a reusable system for generating progress notes, referral letters, safety plans, and discharge summaries — cutting your daily documentation time from 3-4 hours to under 90 minutes.
What you'll need
Go to chat.openai.com and create an account if you don't have one. Click Upgrade to Plus to get GPT-4 access.
What you should see: The GPT-4 model option in the model selector at the top of a new conversation.
Before you start generating notes, create a personal prompt template document you can copy from.
Progress Note Template:
Write a social work progress note in [SOAP/DAP/narrative] format for a [patient type]. S: [subjective]. O: [observations]. A: [assessment]. P: [plan]. Professional clinical tone. 150-200 words.
Referral Letter Template:
Write a referral letter from a hospital clinical social worker to [agency type] for a [patient type]. Reason: [reason]. Include: clinical justification, patient needs, insurance type (Medicaid/Medicare/private), and signature block placeholder.
Safety Plan Template:
Create a safety plan for [patient type with brief risk description]. Include: warning signs, internal coping strategies, support contacts (with placeholders), professional crisis resources, and ER instructions. Plain language.
Discharge Summary Template:
Write a social work discharge summary for [patient type + disposition]. Include: hospitalization reason, psychosocial assessment, identified barriers, discharge disposition with rationale, services arranged (use generic types), follow-up plan.
Open ChatGPT and select GPT-4 from the model dropdown. Paste your template, fill in the brackets, and hit Enter.
What you should see: A complete, professionally written document in the format you specified.
Read through the output carefully and make edits:
The most important step: save your templates so you don't have to rebuild them each time.