Notes

Notes lets staff write clinical notes on a patient, an appointment, a patient’s treatment, a treatment plan (treatments and plans need the Treatments module) or a lab order (needs Laboratory). A note can be kept internal, or shared with the patient.

Notes are written in a full-page editor with headings, lists, checklists and tables, can start from a note template, are saved as you type as a private draft, and can get AI writing help.

Where notes appear

A patient’s record gets a Notes tab, which can also show the notes on the patient’s other records (see below).
Appointments, treatments, treatment plans and lab orders get a Notes section and an Add note action.
The patient’s Patient 360 has a Notes summary.

Notes are listed newest first, with who wrote them and when. A long note shows its first lines with a fade: select Show more to read all of it, and Show less to fold it again. A note that had AI help carries an AI-assisted badge.

Notes on a patient’s record

The patient’s Notes tab starts with the notes written on the Patient file itself. Chips above the list let you see more:

Patient file: notes on the patient (the default).
One chip per kind of record that has notes you can see, such as Appointment, Treatment or Treatment plan, with how many.
All: every note about this patient, whatever it was written on.

Each note written on another record shows a chip naming it, such as Appointment #48. Select the chip to open that record where it has its own page. You only see notes you’re allowed to read (see Who can add notes), and the chips only count those.

Add note on this tab always writes on the patient file. To add a note to a visit or treatment, use Add note on that record.

Note types

Type	Use it for
General note	Anything else.
Progress note	How the patient is doing.
Pre-treatment instructions	What the patient should do before a treatment.
Post-treatment instructions	What the patient should do after a treatment.
Treatment outcome	How a treatment turned out. Add it on the treatment. Internal by default.
Reason for visit	Why the patient came. Recorded automatically.
Patient’s note	What the patient wrote themselves. Recorded automatically.

When an appointment request is approved, Meddesk adds the patient’s reason to the new appointment as a Reason for visit note, and their own notes as a Patient’s note. These two keep the patient’s words exactly as typed, so they can’t be edited.

Write a note

Select Add note on the record. The New note page opens.
Pick how to start:
- Blank note, to write freely.
- A template. Your Recently used templates come first, then all templates grouped by note type. Search templates finds one by name or text. Templates marked For the patient are shared with the patient by default.
- If you left an unfinished note here before, it’s listed first under Your unsaved drafts: select it to continue.
Write the note on the page. Picking a template fills in its sections, and sets the Type and Visible to the patient to the template’s.
In the panel on the right, check the Type, turn on Visible to the patient to share it (see below), and add any Attachments your modules offer. Notes hold no tooth data: findings on teeth go on the dental chart, where each can carry its own note.
Select Add to record. You see Note added. and go back to where you started.

The page works like a document. The note is on the left: the formatting bar stays at its top while the text scrolls on its own. The panel on the right has, from top to bottom: the Note card with Type, Visible to the patient, Add to record, Close and Discard draft; then AI writing help; then Insert template and attachments. Insert template adds another template’s sections to what you’ve written; on an empty note it fills it in instead.

On a phone, the formatting bar stays at the top of the note, and a bar at the bottom of the screen has Note (everything from the right-hand panel, in the same order) and Add to record.

Formatting

You don’t need to know any special syntax:

The formatting bar has Undo, Redo, Section heading, Subheading, Bold, Italic, Bulleted list, Numbered list, Checklist, Quote, Insert table and Divider.
Shortcuts work as usual: Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+Z. Typing - starts a list and 1. a numbered list.

Tables

Select Insert table and pick the size on the grid, for example 4 rows × 3 columns. The first row is the header.
While the cursor is in a table, a Table bar appears under the toolbar:
- Row above / Row below add a row next to the one you’re in.
- Column left / Column right add a column on that side, also in Dari, Pashto and Arabic tables.
- Delete row and Delete column remove the ones you’re in. The header row can’t be deleted, and a table keeps at least one column.
- Delete table removes the whole table after you confirm with Yes, delete.
Tab moves to the next cell, and on the last cell adds a new row. Shift+Tab moves back.

Every change can be taken back with Undo. A cell holds text only: Enter starts a new line inside it, and bold and italic work. Headings, lists, checklists, quotes, dividers and tables can’t go inside a cell, so those buttons are turned off while the cursor is in a table.

Each paragraph follows its own writing direction, so Dari, Pashto and Arabic lines and English lines can be mixed.

A note can be up to 5,000 characters; the counter under the editor shows how much is used.

Drafts and auto-save

You never lose what you write:

As soon as you change something, it’s saved as a draft within a second or two. A small line at the bottom of the page shows Saving draft…, then Draft saved with the time.
Only you can see your drafts. Nobody else sees a draft anywhere: not in the notes lists, Patient 360, reports, printouts, the patient portal or the AI assistant. The note appears for others only once you select Add to record.
Opening the editor and leaving without typing anything stores nothing. If you clear a note back to empty (or back to the untouched template) before ever saving it, its draft is removed by itself, so no clean-up is needed.
Close keeps your draft. The record’s notes show it to you as “type - draft, not saved yet” with Continue, or the bin to discard it.
Discard draft removes it for good after you confirm with Yes, discard. Nothing was added to the record.
If the same note is open in two tabs, the second tab stops saving and shows “This note was changed in another tab or window”: reload it to continue from the latest version.

Who can add notes

On a…	You can add notes if you have
Patient	Create patients or Update patients
Appointment	Create appointments or Update appointments, or you’re the appointment’s clinician (with Assignable to appointments)
Treatment or treatment plan	Create or update patient treatments, or you’re the assigned clinician
Lab order	You can see the order, and you ordered it, work in its laboratory, or have Update lab orders

To see notes, you need the same “read” access as for the record itself, for example Read patient profiles for patient notes or Read appointments for appointment notes. The clinician assigned to an appointment or treatment can also see its notes. Anyone who can see a lab order can see its notes.

AI writing help

When the AI Assistant module is on and the Meddesk platform team has enabled AI for your clinic, staff with the Use AI writing help permission get AI writing help in the panel next to the note, under the Note card (on a phone, under Note). It’s a separate permission from Use AI assistant, so a clinician can have writing help without the chat. It uses your clinic’s AI usage budget.

Select text first to work on just that part, otherwise it works on the whole note. Then choose:

Action	What it does
Clean up	Fixes spelling, grammar and wording.
Organise into sections	Adds headings and bullet points, such as Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan where they fit.
Make it shorter	Makes it concise, keeping every clinical fact.
Patient-friendly	Plain words a patient understands, for instructions you share.
Translate to	Translates into one of your clinic’s languages.
Ask AI to…	Anything else, in your own words, for example “turn this into a checklist”.

AI never changes your note by itself. Its AI suggestion opens on the page with every change highlighted: added words are underlined in green, removed words are struck through in red. Then it’s one click:

Use suggestion puts it in your note.
Keep mine closes it and leaves your note as it was.
Want most of it but not one part? Click that highlighted change first to keep your own wording there (“Keep my wording”), then Use suggestion. Click it again to change your mind.

Undo in the formatting bar takes an applied suggestion back.

AI is told only to reword what you wrote: never to add findings, diagnoses, medicines, doses or numbers, and to mark anything unclear with [?]. Only the note’s text is sent, without the patient’s details. Once you apply at least one change, the saved note is marked AI-assisted.

Notes shared with the patient

Visible to the patient shares the note with the patient. Shared notes are marked Visible to the patient. Leave it off for internal notes: they’re never shown to the patient anywhere.

Where	Which shared notes
Patient portal	Notes on the patient’s appointments and treatments, shown with each one, with their headings and lists.
Appointment emails	The newest shared Pre-treatment instructions note on the appointment is included as the instructions, as plain text.
Printed documents	Shared notes on the record being printed. A lab requisition prints all of the order’s notes, because it goes to the laboratory.

Edit or delete

Only the author can edit a note (Edit note). Editing works like writing: your changes are kept as a private draft, and everyone else keeps seeing the saved note until you select Save changes. Notes with unsaved changes show Unsaved changes to you. Discard changes returns to the saved version.
Reason for visit and Patient’s note can’t be edited.
The author can delete their own note. Others can delete notes on a record if they can delete that kind of record (for example Delete patients for patient notes). Deleting asks you to confirm with Yes, delete, and is permanent.

When a patient, appointment, treatment or treatment plan is deleted, its notes and any drafts on it are deleted with it.

Reports

The Notes data source lists every saved note with its type, author, patient, what it was written on, whether it’s visible to the patient, and whether it’s AI-assisted. Drafts are never included.