If you are with a medical facility such as general practitioners, OBGYN, pediatrics (clients 10 years and older), assisted living or hospice, consider contracting with me to form a multidisciplinary team!
“Therapists, therapeutic case managers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health clinicians best serve people when they share perspective and responsibility in meeting people’s needs and ensuring therapeutic progress toward established treatment goals” (Edwards, B.G. (2016).
INTERDISCIPLINARY TEAMS
“Counselors who are members of interdisciplinary teams delivering multifaceted services to clients remain focused on how to best serve clients. They participate in and contribute to decisions that affect the well-being of clients by drawing on the perspectives, values, and experiences of the counseling profession and those of colleagues from other disciplines (American Counseling Association (ACA), 2014, D. 1. C., p. 10).”
WHY CONTRACT WITH WENDY AT CLARITY COUNSELING?
Medical Offices
Have you delivered medical news to a patient -and despite your training - you may have felt a tinge of uneasiness when you looked at the clock and contemplated the needs of the patient in front of you as well as the needs of the patients waiting for you…and your needs for professional boundaries? When you engage in ‘warm hand offs’ it allows you to show the patient that you care about their emotional needs - as they relate to their medical needs . It shows you are willing to pass them to an interdisciplinary team member for further care in a specialized area different than your own. You can put the patient first without compromising your professional responsibilities to self and others.
Contract my services per client case, on retainer, or per day (3-hour block).
Assisted Living Facilities and Hospice
There are multiple methods to utilizing contracted services:
- Counseling sessions with your residents. On-site counseling sessions at your facility. I am please to integrate counseling with healthy activities such as walking outside or doing arts and crafts. If permitted, we can travel off-site if your facility can provide the appropriate transportation for the client.
- Group counseling sessions with your residents. Group counseling can be presented in a psycho-educational manner. We would decide the appropriate topics of group during our consultation appointment. One example of a psycho-education topic is How to Manage Feelings of Depression.
OR - groups sessions can be integrated with arts and crafts, on-site musical events or on-site exercise activities.
For example, if you want the counseling topic to be Grieving the Days of our Youth, the group counseling activity might be a craft project that reflects a favorite time period in the resident's life. I might encourage the residents to share (1) feelings and memories about this time period, (2) lessons learned and how the lessons carried forward into their life, and (3) how that memory affects them now. The next phase would depend on how the activity evolved. Some residents might need to process feelings of guilt or shame. While others might want to know how to fill an existing void. They might long to feel an emotion similar to the time period they shared. For example, one resident might say they feel like they have no real purpose. And other might say they often grieve the body that was once healthy. In these instances, I would help them explore feasible possibilities to achieve these desired feelings...while remaining within our interdisciplinary team boundaries.
There are numerous possibilities to creating a comfortable and fun counseling experience that still results in psycho-education, mental health processing and feelings of increased wellness.
- Check-in counseling services to your residents. In this case I would not provide official counseling services; rather I would provide residents with attention while utilizing clinical competencies. I do this by being mindful of the type of questions I ask and by being intentional in my responses. This is also an opportunity to check in on the resident’s needs. For example, maybe a "cranky" or "high maintenance" individual simply desires a specific book but their limited time with the nursing staff prevented them from discussing this request. Or, maybe one resident does not look forward to the recreational activities in the facility that week. Our interdisciplinary team might decide I can provide an alternative recreation.
- Staff training
- Mental Health Awareness training for staff who are frequently in direct contact with difficult clients or difficult client cases.
- Conflict resolution training for the administration/ staff.
As an interdisciplinary team we can increase client care in a cost-effective manner
by contracting my services
without altering your existing processes.
For further study on what makes an effective interdisciplinary team please visit this page to read Ten Principles of Good Team Work by Nancarrow, S.A., et al. (2013).
References:
ACA Code of Ethics. Alexandria, VA: Author. American Counseling Association. (2014).
Edwards, B.G., MSMFT, LMFT. (2016). Why collaboration is essential in mental health care. Good Therapy.org. Retrieved from: https://www.goodtherapy.org/bl...
Nancarrow, S.A., et al. (2013). Ten principles of good team work. Human Resources Health 11:19. U.S. National Library of Medicine. National Institutes of Health.