⚖️What if Clients ask for their Therapy Notes?

Part 5 in the note taking series. Read Part 1- Purpose of Psychotherapy notes, Part 2- How to Structure your notes, Part 3- When should you write your notes and Part 4- Are your therapy notes secure?

Globally, while people’s right to access medical records has been expanding, psychotherapy notes have largely been exempt. Simultaneously, there has been a growing interest in ‘Open Notes’ and therapist and client response to the same.

Discomfort is understandable. ‘I want my therapy notes” would probably be top 10 in the list of things you can say to make a therapist uncomfortable in five words.

While we are not bound by law, these questions can come up in therapy and possibly with increasing frequency as the discourse on patient rights evolves. Therefore, exploring your stance on this request can be helpful to pre-emptively prepare for it.

Early research evidence indicates that reading one’s psychotherapy notes can be empowering for some clients as it suggests that they are a ‘grown up care partner’. Additionally, it boosts trust and confidence in the provider and fosters greater understanding of their treatment plan.

This is not to say that all of us should suddenly open up our notes. While these researches found that the therapist concern that clients will get confused are significantly overestimated, some clients did have an unpleasant consequence of feeling judged and offended after reading the therapist’s notes. This calls attention for therapists to be more mindful about the tone and content in their notes (and ideally something we can reflect about regardless of access requests).

What are your thoughts? How do you feel/would feel if a client asked access to their therapy notes?

Reference paper for further reading-

Until next week,
Suvrita

P.S. Next week, will be about a possible way forward for this request. Meanwhile, pretty please forward this to a colleague and help me reach 1000 followers!