Sitting in my hotel room in Brisbane, Australia.  It’s beautiful here: white, sandy beaches and temperatures hovering around 80 degrees.  Can’t say that I’ll be enjoying the sunny weather much.  Tomorrow I’ll be speaking to a group of 135+ practitioners about “Supershrinks.”  I leave for home on Saturday.  While it’s cold and overcast in Chicago, I’m really looking forward to seeing my family after nearly two weeks on the road.

I spent the morning talking to practitioners in New Zealand via satellite for a conference sponsored by Te Pou.  It was a completely new and exciting experience for me, seated in an empty television studio and talking to a camera.  Anyway, organizers of the conference are determined to avoid mistakes made in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere with the adoption of “evidence-based practice.”  As a result, they organized the event around the therapeutic alliance–the most neglected, yet evidence-based concept in the treatment literature!  More later, including a link to the hour-long presentation.

On Friday and Saturday of this last week, I was in the classic Victorian city of Melbourne, Australia doing two days worth of training at the request of WorkSafe and the Traffic Accident Commission.  The mission of WorkSafe is, “Working with the community to deliver outstanding workplace safety, together with quality care and insurance protection to workers and employers.”  100+ clinicians dedicated to helping Australians recover from work and traffic-related injuries were present for the first day of training which focused on using formal client feedback to improve retention and outcome of psychological services.  On day 2, a smaller group met for an intensive day of training and consultation.  Thanks go to the sponsors and attendees for an exciting two days.  Learn more about how outcomes are being used to inform service delivery by watching the video below with Daniel Claire and Claire Amies from the Health Services Group.