SOAP vs DAP — which note format should I use?

Confidant supports two clinical note formats. They cover the same ground; SOAP is more structured, DAP is more concise.

SOAP

Four sections:

Subjective — what the client said, reported, or expressed (their words and experience)
Objective — what the therapist observed and the interventions used (your work)
Assessment — clinical synthesis, trajectory, diagnosis if relevant
Plan — what was agreed for between-session work and the next steps

SOAP is the standard most therapy training programs teach. It separates client experience from therapist work, which makes it easier for an outside reader (supervisor, payer, attorney) to see who said what.

DAP

Three sections:

Data — combined subjective + objective in one paragraph
Assessment — clinical synthesis
Plan — what's next

DAP collapses Subjective and Objective into one Data section. Less structure, less duplication, faster to read. Common in agency settings where caseloads are heavy.

Which to pick

Pick SOAP if your training, supervisor, or payer expects it. SOAP is the safer default for billing audits and forensic contexts.
Pick DAP if you find SOAP redundant for your practice and you don't have an external requirement to use SOAP.

You can change the default any time in Settings → Notes → Note Format, and you can override the default per patient on the patient detail page (e.g. you mostly write SOAP but one specific case is DAP).

Both formats include a Recap

Whichever you pick, Confidant also generates a Session Recap — a chronological bulleted list designed to be a fast pre-session re-orient. The recap is for your eyes only; it's not part of the formal note and isn't included when you copy the note out to your EHR.

See The session recap field for more on how to use it.

Switching formats on existing notes

If you generated a SOAP note and want to convert it to DAP (or vice versa), the simplest path is to change the format setting and click Regenerate note — the AI will produce a new note in the new format from the same transcript. The old note is replaced.