If you are a mental health professional looking for an easy & effective way to streamline your note-taking process – you might want to look into the BIRP format. A popular choice among counselors, psychologists, nurses, and even doctors – the BIRP format is an intervention-focused approach used to record therapeutic interactions, interventions, and client responses.
Serving as fundamental tools in the documentation of therapy sessions, a BIRP Note boils down sessions into four key parts: Behaviour, Intervention, Response, and Plan. This helps you organize your thoughts, observations, and strategies in a standardized way – making it easier for you to track client progress, facilitate professional communication, and comply with legal and clinical standards.
Our fillable BIRP template can be downloaded and printed for use by therapists, counselors, psychologists, social workers, and behavioral health professionals to ensure your documentation is always professional and up to standard. In addition to 4 thematic sections, we have also added a preliminary section to cover details about the session, practitioner, and patient.
Now, let’s explore our template in more detail:
Preliminary Details
In the preliminary section of the template, we capture basic details such as the name of the practitioner and a medical record number (if applicable).
This is followed by information about the session itself, such as when (date/time) and where the session is taking place. This will help you keep an internal record of your sessions, allowing you to easily scan and compare notes for tracking client progress over time.
In the last row, we provide a space for you to add basic details about the client, such as their name, gender, and date of birth.
B – Behavior
In this section of the template, you want to answer questions such as: have your client’s symptoms improved, worsened, or stayed the same since the last session? Or do they appear more or less motivated for treatment?
In other words, this is where you make a record of any remarkable detail you heard or observed during the session. Remember, when documenting your client’s observable actions, statements, and body language, always make sure to add both objective and subjective types of information as this will result in a more informed and comprehensive insight into their current state and functioning.
In particular, include information about things such as their emotional state (do they look happy, sad, relaxed, or tense?), their appearance (do they look visibly worn-out, underslept, or under the influence of drugs?) as well as their own reports of their symptoms and feelings since the last session.
I – Intervention
Now that you have obtained all relevant data from your client, it’s time to address the specific issues or challenges they are facing.
In other words, what did you, as a therapist, do to relieve your client’s symptoms? In this section, you will list down the strategies, techniques, or interventions you used during the session such as any specific exercises or tasks you gave to your client (say, grounding and mindfulness exercises).
When filling out this section, always mention which theoretical approach you are using. And don’t forget to draw a clear link between how each intervention is connected to both the problem at hand and the overall treatment plan.
When writing under Interventions, consider using dynamic verbs such as Reinforced, Developed, Identified, Supported, Redirected, Modeled, and Discussed to describe your therapeutic actions accurately.
R- Response
The response section is all about figuring out how well your client is responding to your interventions.
For one, you can ask your client what barriers (if any) they faced when implementing interventions or what skills they found helpful (or unhelpful) in the process. This will give you clues as to what’s working best for your clients – allowing you to redirect treatment if necessary or keep the same focus in future sessions.
The response section of a BIRP template is not a feature of other progress notes such as DAP Notes, which tend to focus more on clinical observations and judgments. Feel free to check our DAP Note template to explore other similarities and differences between these two note templates before you decide which one works best for you.
P – Plan
Now, it’s time to piece it all together into one comprehensive treatment plan for your client.
As the actionable part of the template, the plan section should include information such as the date and time of the next session, any homework assigned to the client, or any outside referrals needed. In this section, you should also determine the focus of your next session based on your client’s behavior, what they are reporting, and your own clinical judgment about what next steps should be taken.
Here’s an example of what to write under the Plan section:
‘The next session is scheduled for Monday, August 15th. Shared a handout with a client with a summary of grounding and mindfulness exercises and directed them to attempt at least one exercise from the sheet every day until their next session. The client is to report back at the next session on how well they worked for him. Referred client to their GP for possible discussion of concurrent medication treatment for chronic anxiety.’
Who Is Our Template For?
- Therapists
- Counselors
- Psychologists
- Social workers
- Behavioral health professionals
- Nurses
- General Physicians/doctors
- Subject trainers & supervisors
Tips When Using BIRP Notes
When writing BIRP notes, here are some useful tips & best practices to consider:
- Always make sure you store or archive your notes in a safe and secure place to maintain client confidentiality
- Write as clearly and concisely as possible to ensure that others can understand the note
- To ensure accuracy, document your notes right after a session while your memory of the session is still fresh
- Focus more on recording facts and observable behaviors rather than subjective judgments
- Use a consistent format to make sure all important aspects of the session are documented
Wrap Up
The BIRP format is great for tracking progress, interventions, and outcomes in a systematic way – especially so for sessions where important risk factors are addressed, crisis issues are identified, treatment plans are changed, or other significant changes to the diagnosis or treatment process take place.
As an internal record of your client sessions – it also includes all the information you need for billing purposes.
If you want to customize our template to your practice needs and individual preferences, you can simply edit it after downloading it as a Word File, or do this online using Google Docs.
Our free, print-ready BIRP Note Template is available for download in PDF and Word format!
