Outcomes in OZ III

December 4, 2009 By scottdm Leave a Comment

Dateline: November 28, 2009 Brisbane, Australia

Crown Plaza Hotel
Pelican Waters Golf Resort & Spa

As their name implies, LifeLine Australia is the group people call when they need a helping hand. During the last leg of my tour of eastern Australia, I was lucky enough to spend two days working with Lifeline’s dedicated and talented clinicians on improving the retention and outcome of clinical services they offer.

The two-day conference was the kick off for a “transformation project,” as Trevor Carlyon, the executive director of Lifeline Community Care points out in the video segment below, the stated goal of which is “putting clients back at the center of care.” Nearly 200 clinicians working with a diverse clientele located throughout northern Queensland gathered for the event. I look forward to returning in the future as the ideas are implemented across services throughout the system.

Outcomes in Oz II

November 25, 2009 By scottdm 4 Comments

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.

Outcomes in Oz

November 20, 2009 By scottdm Leave a Comment

Greetings from beautiful Melbourne, Australia! For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be traveling the up and down the east coast of this captivating country, conducting workshops and providing consultations on feedback-informed clinical work.

Actually, I’ve had the privilege of visiting and teaching in Australia about once a year beginning in the late 1990’s. Back then, Liz Sheehan, the editor of the “must read” journal Psychotherapy in Australiabrought me in to speak about the then recently published first edition of the Heart and Soul of Change. By the way, if you are not from Australia, and are unfamiliar with the journal, please do visit the website. Liz makes many of the articles that appear in the print version available online. I’ve been a subscriber for years now and await the arrival of each issue with great anticipation. I’m never disappointed.

In any event, on Wednesday this week, I spent the entire day with Mark Buckingham, Fiona Craig, and the clinical staff of Kedesh Rehabilitation Services in Wollongong, Australia–a scenic sea-side location about 45 minutes south of Sydney. Briefly, Kedesh is a residential treatment facility providing cutting-edge, consumer driven, outcome-informed services to people with drug, alcohol, and mental health problems. The crew at Kedesh is using the ORS and SRS to guide service delivery and is, in fact, one of the first to fully implement CDOI in the country.

I’ll be back with more soon, so please check back tomorrow. In the meantime, check out the video with Mark and Fiona.

On the Path of the Supershrinks: An Article by Bill Robinson

September 24, 2009 By scottdm 1 Comment

Not too long ago, my colleagues and I published some preliminary thoughts and findings from our research into “Supershrinks.”

That differences in effectiveness exist between clinicians is neither surprising or new. Indeed, “therapist effects”–as they are referred to in the research literature–have been documented for decades and rival the contribution of factors long known to influence successful psychotherapy (e.g., the therapeutic alliance, hope and expectancy, etc.). Personally, I believe that studying these super-effective clinicians will help practitioners improve the outcome of their clinical work.

Aside from research documenting the existence of “supershrinks,” and our own articles on the subject, little additional information exists documenting how superior performing clinicians achieve the results they do.

Enter Bill Robinson, manager, counselor, and a senior supervsor with Relationships Australia based in Mandurah, Western Australia. I’m also proud to say that Bill is one of a highly select group of clinicians that have completed the necessary training to be designated an ICCE Certified Trainer.

In any event, in the last issue of Psychotherapy in Australia–a treasure of a publication that every clinician dedicated to improving their work should subscribe to–Bill explores the topic of therapist effects, suggesting possible links between effectiveness and clinicians’ abilities to connect with the phenomenological worlds of the people they work with. Trust me, this peer reviewed article is worth reading. Don’t forget to post a comment, by the way, once you’ve finished!

Robinson from Scott Miller