How to write better AI prompts for your notes
Name the section and the change in each prompt. A prompt changes the open note; a change for every later note goes in your note template.
Head of Growth and Operations, JotPsych
You open an AI-drafted note and type "make this better" in the AI Note Assistant. Your prompt names no section and no change. The result is a guess.
Fix this note
Clean up the wording
Cut the HPI to three sentences
Change 'pt' to 'patient' in the Plan
Example prompts typed in the AI Note Assistant, with the section and the change highlighted in each specific prompt. Write your next prompt the same way.
- Name the section. Type "Shorten the Assessment section," not "shorten this." For a change you want across sections, name each one: "List dose changes in both the Medications and Plan sections."
- Name the change. Say what to add, cut, or reword. "Write the Plan as a numbered list" tells the AI Note Assistant what you want, and "improve the Plan" doesn't.
- Read each change before you approve it. The AI Note Assistant puts its change in the note and marks the section. Choose View changes to compare the new text with the earlier text, then Approve to keep the change or Reject to undo it. Copying a marked section counts as approving its change, so don't copy one you haven't read.
- Put changes for every note in your note template. After a formatting change, the AI Note Assistant may ask if you want to train the section to always apply your new format. Choose Yes, train this only if you want the change in every later note. Remove sections you never use from the template itself.
| Change | Where you make it | Notes the change reaches |
|---|---|---|
| Reword one Assessment sentence | A prompt in the AI Note Assistant | The open note |
| Use bullets in the Mental Status Exam | A prompt, then Yes, train this | The open note and later notes from your note template |
| Add a sleep section | Your note template | Later notes from that template |
In the AI Note Assistant's offer to train a section, Yes, train this updates the section's instructions in your note template, and No thanks leaves the template as it is. Decide which notes a change should reach before you make it.
Keep visit findings out of your note template, so each note records what happened in its own visit. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services warns about notes that "appear identical for different visits," in its Medicaid fact sheet for behavioral health practitioners.
"Physicians retain their duty to review records created with AI," says the Federation of State Medical Boards in its 2024 AI policy. State medical boards based 6% of their disciplinary actions from 2015 to 2019 on failure to keep adequate medical records, per the same policy. Whatever your license, hold your AI-drafted notes to the same duty.
JotPsych's AI Note Assistant marks each section it changes, so you can approve or reject each change.
Book 15 minutes- Federation of State Medical Boards, policy on the responsible and ethical incorporation of AI into clinical practice, adopted April 2024: the medical records section.
- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “Medicaid Documentation for Behavioral Health Practitioners”, Medicaid Program Integrity Education fact sheet, December 2015.