- Clinician Onboarding
- 4 mins
As in most fields, many elements of working in mental health simply cannot be taught in a graduate program. On the job, therapists learn both general best practices and how things are done in a specific office. Private group practices have their own particularities that can differ from what a clinician can expect at a community health facility or larger healthcare provider. So for mental health clinicians joining a small private practice, either fresh out of graduate school or coming from an environment more akin to a large enterprise, onboarding is a necessity.
Private practices that don’t show new clinicians the ropes risk introducing all sorts of internal strain in the office. But not just any onboarding process will do. As you’ll see, because of the state of therapy today, clinician onboarding requires some technological transformation to make visits to the therapist’s office work for clinicians, administrative staff and, most importantly, clients.
Bottlenecks, vicious cycles, and private practice’s new process problem
Therapists are seeing more clients than ever. The last few years of global disruption have sent individuals, couples, and families seeking out private practitioners to address a range of mental health concerns. The unpredictable psycho-social ripple effects of the pandemic years keep coming, and difficulties like an inflationary economy add to the weight people feel. For private therapy practices, this has meant backed up schedules even as they hire qualified, thoughtful, serious clinicians as quickly as possible.
Bringing on therapists fast to manage the client influx can mean learning operational processes falling by the wayside. With many clinicians in and out throughout the day, working as contractors, little misunderstandings over scheduling and compliance responsibilities can quickly add up to big issues. Remote telehealth adds more complexity, increasing the need for therapists to get paperwork right to prevent confusion, while rarely or never entering the office.
If clinicians do not have a solid introduction to what they can expect, and what is expected of them, issues can arise such as:
- Inter-clinician tensions over people incorrectly booking space and scheduling conflicts
- Misusing/misplacing in-office resources
- Incorrect use of solutions for filing case notes
- Administrators having to check work, ask for corrections, or follow up on mishandled intake.
On a case-by-case basis, some of these problems might be quickly resolved in the short-term. But in an environment that facilitates them, they can fester and compound in the background, eventually trickling down to compromising client care.
Private practice clients expect and deserve that their therapy space will be a calm, comfortable environment. In operations where people are confused about operational basics, clients will sense a “bad vibe,” if not see evidence of it. If problems arise with their own paperwork, their visit can become less about therapy, and more about revisiting forms.
Conversely, when incoming therapists understand internal processes from day one, it makes for a more efficient practice with happier staff, which means more effective relationships with clients. This is why practices need to implement the right kind of focused, streamlined, tech-enabled clinician onboarding to achieve this.
Video onboarding: built to manage the therapy boom
Online video content is emerging as one of the most powerful tools available for clinician onboarding.
An informal onboarding process, one that might involve clinician shadowing, one-on-one process walkthroughs and the like, can still be an important part of getting new therapists ready for their role at a private practice. But in a busy private practice, therapists and administrators will have their own caseloads and workloads, and might not have the time or bandwidth to pencil in a process walkthrough with a new hire. This can lead to clinicians either having to wait for someone who is available to onboard them, or start seeing clients without knowing all the office’s best practices, causing concerns down the road.
Having professionally created online video content to train new clinicians ensures:
- Authority of information: Video resources developed by or in conjunction with a trusted vendor will always have the most up-to-date information on how clinicians should manage intake, payments, scheduling and other tasks.
- Consistency of process: Within a private practice, clinicians might arrive at their own way of doing things that works for them. But with multiple clinicians doing their own thing, confusion can arise. Minor oversights can add up into big efficiencies. A single source of best practices means one process that everyone can follow from the outset, and reference as necessary in the long-run.
- Accessibility of resources: Since it’s not uncommon for therapists to see clients at multiple practices simultaneously, having clinician onboarding resources available remotely and conveniently in one place online is critical. Clinicians can watch videos on their own schedule, refer back to them whenever they need to, and absorb and master the best practices without having it feel like a burdensome addition to their workload.
The only way to get therapists prepared today
Small private practices are a cornerstone of mental health care. They are the kind of environment clients think of when someone says “therapist,” and for many types of clients they are proving to be a veritable lifeline. A weekly or semi-weekly visit, in person or via telehealth, is proving to help countless people face an overwhelming world from a place of strength, confidence, and competence.
But if clinicians don’t get up to speed on operational best practices quickly, it means spending extra time and effort on constantly redoing, relearning, fielding complaints, and all the stress that comes with it. Such an environment can even get in the way of clinicians’ client focus.
That’s why if you’re a private practice, clinician onboarding should be a top priority. Easy-to-absorb, easy to access video onboarding resources, and a streamlined process to deliver them, have never been more important. The good news is, these things have also never been more available. Get set up with the right onboarding vendor today, and position your clinicians to offer the high-quality care they’re there to provide, without letting the little things get in the way.
