Progress Notes: From Misery to Mindfulness

California Consortium of Addiction Programs and Professionals
COUNSELOR MAGAZINE | JANUARY 2020

Progress Notes: From Misery to Mindfulness

By Elizabeth Irias, LMFT

I hate writing progress notes. You probably do too. They are often the most unpleasant part of our jobs, but also one of the most critical, particularly in the world of addictive disorder treatment. We work in an industry that is becoming increasingly riskier as the years pass, given that the national suicide and overdose rates have been on the rise. Our notes are effectively legal documents that follow both us and our clients for many years, and they truly have the ability to irreparably tarnish otherwise shining counseling careers—clinicians can actually go to jail due to documentation oversights—and can also have significant, life-changing effects on our clients, like the loss of disability payments or denials of insurance coverage. As a whole, our industry does not do enough to discuss the impact of clinical documentation on our clients, ourselves, and our workplaces—we simply trudge through it without much intentionality.