You spend your day listening, diagnosing, and making decisions that matter. What you don’t have time for is building every note from scratch. That’s where AI scribe templates come in.

These structured outlines can guide the AI to generate complete, organized, clinically relevant notes in seconds.

This guide walks through how templates typically work across AI scribes, the types you’ll see, how easy they usually are to set up, and what to consider when evaluating template quality for your specialty. 

What are AI scribe templates?

An AI scribe template is a predefined structure that tells the scribe:

• What sections to include
  How each section should be labeled
• What type of information belongs where
• What style, tone, or formatting to follow
  
  

The AI fills in the details from the patient encounter, but it follows your structure so the results are consistent and predictable.

Most templates mirror common clinical documentation frameworks, like SOAP notes, DAP notes, or other progress note types. 

This structure isn’t just tradition — it works. Research on structured documentation found that standardized templates improve clarity, consistency, and completeness of clinical notes. In one study, structured templates significantly increased note quality scores compared to free-form notes

How AI scribe templates work

Across most AI scribes, template systems fall into a few common categories.

Pre-built templates

These are ready to use and cover common visit types — annual wellness, sick visits, medication management, mental health sessions, and more.

Specialty templates

Designed with field-specific terminology, workflows, and structures. For example:

• Pediatrics — Often include age-specific history prompts, or developmental milestones, They’re especially helpful for keeping well-child visits, acute illnesses, and follow-ups consistent.
  
• Family medicine — Balance breadth and continuity: preventive care checklists, chronic disease tracking, and family or social context. Because visit types vary widely, flexible templates that adapt to both acute and longitudinal care are especially useful.
  
• Psychiatry— Typically emphasize structured symptom review, mental status exam components, therapeutic interventions, and medication management. Clear sectioning helps ensure nothing clinically relevant is missed during longer or more complex sessions.

"I absolutely LOVE Freed. At the end of the visit, all I have to do is cut and paste into my note template." — Heather Kaufman, NP

Customizable templates

Most AI scribes allow you to change section names, add new subsections, or hide sections you never use. This helps protect against “template bloat,” — where overly long or rigid templates are harder to read.

Types of AI scribe templates

How to choose the right template for your practice

Choosing well upfront saves frustration later. Here’s a process clinicians commonly use:

1. Start with your most frequent visit types

Templates work best when they match your day-to-day patterns. If 60% of your visits are follow-ups, the template should emphasize interval history, medication checks, and changes since the last visit.

2. Check for EHR compatibility

Some EHRs encourage consolidated notes; others split notes across fields. Make sure your template mirrors what your EHR expects to avoid extra editing later.

3. Look for specialty alignment

Templates should recognize the vocabulary and salient details of your specialty.

4. Pilot with a small group

Running the template across 5–10 encounters is usually enough to surface formatting issues or unnecessary sections.

5. Maintain a short feedback loop

Templates are living documents. Most practices revisit them monthly or quarterly.

How to customize an AI scribe template

AI scribes vary in how deeply you can customize. A typical setup process looks like this:

1. Start with a base template (common visits, specialty templates, or structured SOAP).
   
2. Modify section headers to match your workflow.
   
3. Add specialty-specific phrasing, abbreviations, or preferred sentence styles.
   
4. Remove sections you never use (e.g., Social History for limited-scope visits).
   
5. Map content to your EHR layout, especially if you paste into structured fields.
   
6. Test with 2–3 real notes, then iterate.

Deploying templates across a practice

Once a template is finalized, most clinics follow a simple rollout plan:

• Create a quick reference guide
  
• Run a short demo showing the AI filling the template
  
• Have clinicians test it on 1–2 live visits
  
• Gather feedback on clarity, accuracy, and structure
• Re-release the template with edits

Where Freed fits in

If you’re comparing AI scribe templates, it helps to see how different tools approach flexibility. At Freed, templates are built to feel natural from day one — whether you want structure, customization, or something that adapts as you work.

• Structured templates to keep notes clear, consistent, and easy to review
• Learned templates that evolve based on your edits, so your notes start to sound more like you
• Instant templates for visits you repeat dozens of times a week

If you want a closer look at how Freed designs and supports clinical templates, check out our full guide.

The bottom line

AI scribe templates work best when they reduce your mental load — not add to it. The right template brings clarity, consistency, and fewer after-hours edits, whether you’re documenting a straightforward visit or something more complex.

Start with a structure that fits your specialty, tune it to match how you think, and let the template do the rest. I

Want to see how customizable templates feel in practice? Freed’s free trial is a simple way to explore what works for your workflow.