Can Berries AI Help PMHNPs Save Time on Charting?
(Full Review + My Thoughts)
If you have ever ended a long day with 15 unfinished notes, you are not alone. Psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners (PMHNPs) deal with some of the heaviest cognitive loads in medicine: detailed interviews, complex medication management, and documentation requirements that never seem to shrink.
In this post, I will review a tool I recently tested that might help: Berries AI. I will walk through where it works well, where it falls short, and whether it could be worth exploring for your own practice.
What is Berries AI?
Berries AI is a charting assistant that uses artificial intelligence to help psychiatric clinicians complete documentation faster. It listens during patient encounters (or can work after the visit) and generates structured psychiatric notes, aiming to reduce the manual burden of typing every interaction line by line.
The company specifically markets to mental health providers, which is a refreshing change compared to generalized “doctor note” AI tools. It also allows you to build out different formatting templates for the note to follow.
If you are curious, Berries offers a generous starter option. You can create up to 20 notes completely free without needing to enter payment information upfront. If you continue using it after the free notes, the regular subscription cost is $99 per month.
Using my referral link also gives you $50 off your first month, making it easier to test whether it fits your workflow without a full-price commitment.
Try Berries AI (Use Coupon Code: PMHNPHelper)
Where Berries AI Really Shines
Saves Time: Speeds up routine note-writing dramatically, especially for med management visits.
Reduces Fatigue: Less typing means fresher thinking for actual clinical work.
Structured Psychiatric Focus: Templates and outputs are mental-health-specific, not generic SOAP notes.
Fits Busy Workflows: Works during or after sessions, easy to adapt to different clinical styles.
Ideal for Short Med Management Visits: 15 to 30 minute follow-ups benefit hugely from quick, AI-assisted charting.
Berries allows you to stay patient-focused during the visit while still producing complete, audit-ready notes afterward, which is a major win when seeing 15 to 25 patients a day.
When Berries AI Might Not Be as Helpful
While Berries is impressive, it is not magic. Here are a few situations where it may not fully meet expectations:
Complex Diagnostic Evaluations: If you are doing a 90-minute intake with layered differential diagnosis, the AI will still need heavy editing afterward.
Highly Psychodynamic Sessions: Berries is great at structured notes such as MSEs, medications, and interventions, but less strong at capturing rich narrative therapy sessions.
Specialty Systems with Strict Templates: Some hospital or group systems require rigid EMR formatting, so Berries output might need reformatting.
Providers Who Want Full Narrative Control: If you prefer to manually sculpt every word, you may find AI suggestions more of a distraction than a help.
Poor Audio Environments: If the AI struggles to capture clear speech in noisy settings, note quality can drop.
In short, Berries is a time-saving tool, but it is not perfectly suited for every clinical situation.
Who Berries AI is Ideal For
Busy outpatient PMHNPs: High-volume follow-ups and medication management visits.
Inpatient PMHNPs: Fast documentation of daily progress notes and quick discharge summaries, although I would not recommend it for inpt work if you typically evaluate pt’s in their own rooms (as opposed to your own assessment room).
PMHNP students: Learning efficient, structured documentation early builds good habits.
Early-career NPs: helps offload some stress associated with an already steep clinical learning curve.
Final Thoughts: My Verdict on Berries AI
Berries AI can be an incredible time-saver for psychiatric providers, but like any external tool, it introduces the risk of overreliance. It is important to maintain your core note-writing skills independently and periodically review your charting process, especially if you ever move to a new system or lose access to AI tools.
Routine visits get faster.
Mental fatigue drops.
More energy stays focused on patients, not on keyboards.
If you want to try it, remember you can create 20 notes completely free. After that, if you decide to continue, the regular price is $99 per month. Using my referral link gives you $50 off your first month, which helps reduce the barrier to testing it fully.
Try Berries AI (Use Coupon Code: PMHNPHelper)
No pressure of course. The link is just there if you are interested, and using it helps support this Substack.
Thank you if you choose to use it.
TL;DR
Berries is a great fit for busy PMHNPs handling medication management and standard follow-ups.
It is less helpful for complex intakes, therapy notes, or very rigid EMR systems.
There is a small risk of overreliance, so keep your independent charting skills sharp.
Berries offers 20 free notes to try, and a $50 discount if you continue through my link.
Overall Rating: 7/10 for saving time if used thoughtfully.