For both therapists and clients, a productive therapy relationship can start before the first visit, if onboarding is a part of intake. That means that right when a client signs up for a visit, alongside those standard intake questions that establish the need-to-know data for scheduling and billing, the process of getting the client, and the therapist, ready for the first session begins. Part of this preparation consists of the therapist getting a sense of their client’s personality, needs, and expectations, so that from day one, they are aware of what concerns they might be facing and what strategies they will need to employ. Today’s intake and onboarding technology makes this possible in a way that it never was before.
Even in medical fields outside of mental health, you may have noticed more detailed, specific information being collected as old-fashioned pen-and-paper forms have been supplemented or replaced by online solutions. Because you can now log in from home or via your smartphone and input answers before a doctor’s appointment, you can put some thought into your responses on your own time, rather than trying to churn out an essay in the waiting room. You can finish an intake form at your leisure, and the doctor ideally will have an opportunity to review it before the appointment rather than well after. In therapy, where having a real sense of the client’s inner life and personality is a necessity, the ability to collect answers to customized questions provides an even bigger opportunity to enhance the experience of the visit than elsewhere in healthcare.
Technology is enabling therapists to get a feel for how a client thinks, what they see as their main obstructions preventing them from contentment, and what they are looking for out of therapy from the outset. The quality of the information you get from the client, though, naturally depends on the quality of the questions. In fact, to get the most out of onboarding, asking the right questions can make all the difference. Here is how.
Good intake questions let therapists keep the focus on client improvement.
We’ve all had personal, friendly conversations in which we’ve gotten to talking, forgotten what we started the conversation for, and had to go back later and address the issue at hand. Talk therapy is much different from speaking with a friend, but it’s a conversation nonetheless, and even the most well-trained therapists can be drawn off on perfectly pleasant tangents that do not address an actual concern the client is facing. Add to that a client possibly being nervous or not having much experience with therapy, and you could find them unintentionally—or even subconsciously or intentionally—steering the conversation away from where they ultimately need it to go to improve their life.
Having a good overview of how clients see their problems and what their goals are lets a therapist be certain that the conversation, free-flowing as it may be, can always be steered in the right direction. Giving clients intake questions to answer as open-ended as “what are you looking for out of therapy” and “what are the major problems you are currently facing” lets the client start telling their story. The therapist can use that as a reference point to return to when things seem to be getting sidetracked, or use it as something to update and build on if the client feels, over the course of the session, that the initial answers were incomplete.
Good intake questions gather information without interrogation.
Accidentally starting off on an adversarial footing with a client is a bad position to be in for all parties involved in a therapy session. That extends to intake questions, and so when you’re crafting them, you want to make sure it doesn’t seem like they’re grilling the client in tone or in substance. Getting need-to-know information is one thing, but going too in-depth asking for details on sensitive topics might leave them feeling less open to talking through potential solutions for the problems they’re there to deal with. While intake questions present a huge opportunity to get a good start, they’re only a precursor to the actual therapy session. There will be plenty of time, in a good therapist-client relationship, to get into more difficult details that might be seen as alienating when asked on a web-form.
Good intake questions are just the start of onboarding.
Good intake questions can help get every therapist-client relationship off on the right foot. When a therapist walks into a session equipped with those answers, they can pursue a course of care that speaks to the client’s needs right from the outset, building on a strong foundation, steering away from ineffective pathways, and creating the foundation for a comfortable rapport in an environment that can otherwise, in some cases, make a new client a little nervous.
But while good intake questions are critical, there’s more to an overall client onboarding strategy. After an incoming client answers those questions and they’re in the system and ready to go, a truly optimized onboarding solution leads them to the next step. A solution that provides friendly, informative, easily digestible content, walking an incoming client through every aspect of what therapy is and how they can get the most out of it, makes sure that both parties are ready in the way they each need to be. The therapist is prepared with a feel for who the client they’ll be talking to is, the issues they’ll need to address, and how to get started. The client will know what to expect, how to approach the conversation, and how to evaluate success.
Onboarding empowers both clinicians and clients to approach their side of the relationship more directly and effectively, so that every therapy session has the best chance possible of being a step in the right direction. So if you want to help both clients and clinicians feel like they’re heading down a productive path each session, improving outcomes and satisfaction, start thinking about getting your onboarding strategies and solutions in place and optimized!
