Can you believe that this is nearly the end of my last semester of coursework?! I can’t. Next semester I begin my practicum and my integrative project (thesis), then I jump into my 22 week clinical. I’ll be working at an inpatient drug and alcohol addiction facility in the evenings. So long, sleep! See you in 30 weeks! Thankfully, we’ll be taking a vacation prior to this venture. So, here’s one of my final notebook excerpts that I thought was mildly interesting. Enjoy.
In a relatively recent article by Chinman and Allende, collaborative treatment planning was studied and discussed as a viable method for increasing patient engagement and satisfaction with their treatment. To begin collaborative treatment planning can be described as process in which the client directs the motivation and context of their treatment specifically addressing personal concerns while still incorporating the mental health or medical needs. Consider a visit to a new dentist where, during the intake the client is specifically asked what they would like to improve about their teeth. The client might say anything from problems with bleeding during brushing or they would like to have a more attractive smile. Either way the dentist is able to address the medical issues present in the client’s dental care, but the dentist is able to do this while specifically addressing the needs of the client. The client has defined the context of their care, not the actual care. In this sense the client is clearly more satisfied in that they feel as though their issues were directly addressed as opposed to them being led into a dental chair and had their face numbed and drilled, meanwhile they still don’t like their smile and don’t know how to improve it.
This approach taps into the natural curiosity of the therapist. By being curious about the motivation and context of the client’s therapy, the therapist not only provides a more specific and perhaps more holistic treatment model, they also perpetuate a more engaged and satisfied client.
One focus of the article was comparing the perceived obstacles between the client and the therapist and discussing the implications thereto. Listed below are the top three obstacles as selected by the client and the therapist.
Client
• Lack of time
• Unsure of how to do treatment planning
• Not sure that setting treatment goals would help
Therapist
• Consumer’s disability
• Consumer’s non-compliance
• Consumer’s lack of interest
(Chinman & Allende, 1999, pp.213, 215)
Clearly, not all of these perceptions are aligned and understanding the limitations of the study would be important. One might argue that “Consumer’s lack of interest” and “Not sure that setting treatment goals would help” could be interpreted as meaning the same thing or at least motivated by the same factor. Additionally, one might consider that the participants in this study would not fall into the “Consumer’s non-compliance” and “Consumer’s lack of interest” categories by default of the circumstance of their treatment. Perhaps it was terminated prematurely or they were being treated under duress. Either way, one might argue that they would not be inclined to participate in the study, thereby creating a natural sway of the results. None the less, what cannot be ignored is that those clients that are participating and engaged in their own treatment could be more satisfied with their treatment if they were involved in developing the context. Assuming that all clients are unable, unwilling or uninterested does a disservice to the client, the therapist and the profession as a whole. Moreover, by engaging the client in their own treatment, they may decrease the number of patients that fall into the therapists’ top three perceived obstacles.
Adam T
References
Chinman, M., & Allende, M. (1999). On the Road to Collaborative Treatment Planning: Consumer and Provider Perspectives. Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, 26(2), 211. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database
