Fifteen Questions and Answers about Feedback Informed Treatment and Deliberate Practice

I love live trainings. The spontaneity. The interactions. The possibilities inherent in learning together. Each year, for the past 30, I’ve been out — generally 40 weeks out of 52 — providing workshops on feedback-informed treatment and, more recently, deliberate practice. It’s been a gift to work with clinicians and agencies in different countries around the globe.

Of course, all that came to an abrupt end with the COVID-19 outbreak. I quickly found myself missing the time spent with colleagues. Others in the FIT community, I discovered, felt similarly. So, together with ICE Community Manager, Cynthia Maeschalck, I began organizing a series of free, web-based meetings. So far, we’ve held three, each one filled to capacity within hours of being announced.

Nearly a month ago, the recording of the first meetup was released; the second three weeks later. Now, we have the third. Looking over the questions, the breadth and depth of information covered is simply amazing. And, thanks to the folks at CEunits, for a small fee, you can earn continuing education credits for watching! Simply click on the links below (or contained in the video description on youtube). No pressure! Just an opportunity should you need CE’s.

In the meantime, here’s a minute-by-minute catalog of the questions asked and answers given. Feel free to listen from start to finish or hop ahead to the material of interest to you.

Use of FIT in an online forum: How and should measures be completed ahead of time? (2:10)
Using the ORS to gauge need and triage delivery of services (5:19)
What is the meaning and relevance of the clinical cutoff on the ORS? (6:12)
How to tailor care to the client’s “Theory of Change” (10:10)
What do the various “performance metrics” reported in the software systems mean? (12:30)
Why you shouldn’t use just the paper and pencil measures? (16:32; 29:55)
Should you add items to the ORS to capture areas of client functioning not addressed by the measure? (23:44)
What is the average rate of improvement of therapists who have used FIT for two years or more? (26:40; 39:25)
How to utilize FIT in a group-based program? (31:31)
How to maintain sufficient structure and focus while working to incorporate client feedback? (35:32)
Given the lack of evidence for traditional supervision, where can a clinician go to get the kind of support/coaching necessary for effective deliberate practice? (37:10; 45:50)
How can FIT and deliberate practice help you improve your effectiveness? (41:35)
Using feedback in supervision (48:00)
When is the best time to learn about and implement deliberate practice? (49:15)
When do we challenge client feedback? (52:57)

Until next time,

Scott

Scott D. Miller, Ph.D.
Director, International Center for Clinical Excellence