Voice to Text for Counselors
Your focus belongs on your client, not on typing notes. Blurt lets you capture session summaries, treatment plans, and clinical documentation the moment your client leaves. Hold a button, speak your observations while they're fresh, release. Text appears in your EHR, case notes, or wherever your cursor is. No more staying late to reconstruct sessions from memory. No more choosing between presence and documentation. Speak it, save it, move on.
The Typing Problem
Writing session notes after every appointment
You just spent 50 minutes fully present with a client processing trauma. Now you have 10 minutes before your next session to capture everything that happened. You stare at the blank progress note, trying to remember the exact phrasing they used about their mother. The therapeutic insight from minute 23. The homework you assigned. By the time you type it all, your next client is waiting and half the session details are already fading.
Treatment plan documentation that piles up
Insurance requires updated treatment plans every 90 days. You have 35 active clients. Each plan needs measurable goals, interventions, and progress updates. That's hours of documentation you don't have. You find yourself staying until 7pm on Fridays just to catch up on treatment plans, missing dinner with your family because insurance companies need their paperwork.
Insurance documentation and prior authorizations
The insurance company denied continued sessions for your client with severe depression. Now you need to write an appeal documenting medical necessity, symptom severity, and treatment progress. You know exactly what to say — you could explain it clearly in a two-minute phone call — but typing the formal documentation takes 45 minutes. Meanwhile, your client is waiting to know if they can keep seeing you.
Referral letters and coordination of care
Your client needs a psychiatric evaluation and you need to send a referral letter. You need to summarize presenting concerns, current symptoms, treatment history, and what you're hoping the psychiatrist will assess. It's all in your head from 15 sessions together, but translating that into a professional letter takes time you've already allocated to four other tasks today.
Progress summaries for case conferences and supervision
Supervision is in an hour and you need to present three cases. You should have written up progress summaries, but you've been back-to-back with clients all week. Now you're frantically trying to reconstruct what happened with each client over the past month while your supervisor waits. You know you'd be a better clinician with better documentation, but there's never time.
How It Works
Blurt works with every system counselors use — SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, Jane, your EHR, Word documents, even email. Anywhere you can put a cursor, Blurt can put your words.
Hold your hotkey
Press your chosen shortcut right after a session ends. A small indicator shows Blurt is listening.
Speak your clinical observations
Talk through the session while it's fresh. Blurt handles punctuation and formats your thoughts clearly.
Release and document
Text appears at your cursor in your EHR, note template, or document. Edit if needed, then you're done.
Real Scenarios
Session notes immediately after appointments
Your client just left after a breakthrough session about their relationship patterns. You have 8 minutes before your next appointment. Cursor in your progress note, hold hotkey, and speak: 'Client identified connection between current relationship anxiety and childhood attachment disruption. Expressed significant affect when discussing father's emotional unavailability. Demonstrated insight into pattern of choosing emotionally distant partners. Assigned homework to notice and journal moments of seeking reassurance.' Thirty seconds of speaking captures what would take 5 minutes to type. On to your next client with notes already done.
Treatment plan drafts
It's treatment plan review time for your client with generalized anxiety. Hold your hotkey and talk through the plan: 'Goal one: Client will reduce frequency of panic attacks from three per week to one or fewer within 90 days. Intervention: Continue weekly CBT sessions focusing on cognitive restructuring and exposure hierarchy. Progress: Client has reduced panic attacks from five per week to three, demonstrating engagement with breathing techniques.' The formal structure emerges from natural speech. Edit for clinical precision, submit, done.
Insurance documentation and appeals
Insurance denied continued sessions and you need to appeal. Instead of agonizing over wording, hold your hotkey: 'Medical necessity documentation for continued treatment. Client presents with severe major depressive disorder with suicidal ideation requiring ongoing safety monitoring. Client has shown improvement from PHQ-9 score of 22 to 17 but remains at clinical severity requiring continued weekly intervention. Premature termination poses significant risk of symptom relapse and potential crisis.' Speak the clinical justification you'd give a colleague, then polish for the formal submission.
Referral letters to psychiatrists and specialists
Your client needs a medication evaluation. Cursor in your referral template, speak: 'Referring for psychiatric evaluation for medication management. Client is a 34-year-old female presenting with treatment-resistant depression, currently in weekly therapy for eight months. Has tried behavioral activation, cognitive restructuring, and interpersonal approaches with limited symptom relief. Sleep disturbance and anhedonia persist despite therapeutic gains in other areas. Requesting evaluation for antidepressant medication to augment therapy.' Complete referral in under a minute.
Progress summaries for case conferences
You're presenting at your consultation group in 20 minutes and need to summarize three cases. For each one, hold and speak: 'Client B, 28-year-old male, presenting concern of social anxiety impacting career advancement. In treatment for four months. Initial avoidance of all workplace presentations has shifted to completing two presentations with moderate anxiety. Current focus on cognitive distortions around perceived judgment from colleagues.' Three cases summarized in under 5 minutes. You walk into consultation prepared and confident.
Supervision notes and self-reflection
After a challenging session where you felt stuck, you want to capture your thoughts for supervision. Hold your hotkey: 'Processing session with Client M. Noticed countertransference when client described conflict with their therapist mother. Found myself being overly validating rather than exploring ambivalence. Want to discuss in supervision whether my own experience with professional parents is impacting my clinical judgment here.' Honest reflection captured immediately, not lost to memory by the time supervision arrives.
Psychoeducational material drafts
A client needs a summary of the CBT model to share with their partner. Instead of typing from scratch, speak: 'Cognitive behavioral therapy is based on the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. When we experience a situation, our automatic thoughts about that situation influence how we feel emotionally and what we do in response. By identifying and examining these automatic thoughts, we can develop more balanced perspectives and reduce emotional distress.' Client handout drafted in 30 seconds.
Why counselors choose Blurt over built-in dictation
| Blurt | macOS Dictation | |
|---|---|---|
| Activation | Single hotkey, instant start between sessions | Navigate to microphone icon or voice command |
| Speed | Text appears in under 500ms | 2-3 second delay disrupts clinical thinking |
| Clinical terminology | Accurate with therapeutic terms and diagnoses | Struggles with DSM terminology and clinical language |
| Reliability | Consistent accuracy for documentation | Inconsistent results, often requires retyping |
| Privacy design | Built with clinical documentation in mind | General consumer tool not designed for healthcare |
Frequently Asked Questions
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