Improving Clinical Effectiveness
8 Weeks: 2.5 hours on Wednesdays
Starting 30th October 6-8 pm (GMT)
Why Improve Clinical Effectiveness
1) Therapists don't improve with time and experience
2) There is little difference between therapy models, learning a new one will not improve your outcomes
3) Therapists hugely differ in their effectiveness and outcomes
4) Level of qualification or training is not a predictor of effectiveness
5) While supervision is integral the evidence is scant on its direct impact on client outcomes
Deliberate Practice will help you:
Enhance your effectiveness;
Strengthen your skills in engaging, retaining, and assisting a diverse range of clients;
Provide a framework to assist you in creating and maintaining a lifelong professional development strategy based on evidence informed principles and techniques
Enhance your effectiveness;
Strengthen your skills in engaging, retaining, and assisting a diverse range of clients;
Provide a framework to assist you in creating and maintaining a lifelong professional development strategy based on evidence informed principles and techniques
Whats Included in the Course
1) Cutting edge evidence based research
2) Live weekly lectures and skills demonstrations
3) A framework for improving clinical effectiveness
4) Multiple choice quiz to support learning
5) 20 hour CPD certificate
Psychotherapists should engage in deliberate practice because it is a proven pathway to mastering therapeutic skills and ensuring consistent client improvement. Deliberate practice involves targeted, intentional efforts to improve specific areas of weakness, with feedback and repetition. While therapists may gain experience through routine sessions, this alone does not guarantee expertise or progressive development. Engaging in deliberate practice allows therapists to move beyond automatic, habitual patterns, refining both their technical and interpersonal skills.Key reasons for psychotherapists to adopt deliberate practice include:
Improved Client Outcomes: Research shows that therapists who engage in deliberate practice achieve better results for their clients. By intentionally honing skills like empathy, intervention techniques, or emotional regulation, therapists can more effectively respond to client needs and complexities. It enables them to make necessary adjustments, ensuring therapy is as beneficial as possible.
Counteracting Experience Plateaus: Many therapists hit a plateau in skill development after a few years, where they stop improving despite gaining more experience. Deliberate practice breaks through this plateau by encouraging therapists to identify gaps in their knowledge and competence, work on them systematically, and prevent complacency.
Continual Adaptation to Client Diversity: Each client brings unique challenges that require tailored approaches. Deliberate practice helps therapists develop a wider range of strategies, allowing them to better handle diverse client issues such as trauma, cultural differences, or complex mental health diagnoses. This adaptability enhances their effectiveness in various contexts.
Enhanced Self-Awareness and Reflection: Through deliberate practice, therapists can engage in self-reflection, receiving feedback from supervisors, peers, or even recordings of their sessions. This process fosters greater awareness of their own strengths and blind spots, allowing them to refine therapeutic techniques and build deeper therapeutic alliances.
Staying Current and Competent: The field of psychotherapy is constantly evolving, with new research, interventions, and approaches. Deliberate practice encourages therapists to stay engaged with the latest developments, ensuring they remain competent and up-to-date, providing the highest standard of care to their clients.
By engaging in deliberate practice, psychotherapists invest in their long-term growth, deepen their therapeutic impact, and safeguard the quality of care they provide to clients, ensuring continuous professional development and improved mental health outcomes.
Improved Client Outcomes: Research shows that therapists who engage in deliberate practice achieve better results for their clients. By intentionally honing skills like empathy, intervention techniques, or emotional regulation, therapists can more effectively respond to client needs and complexities. It enables them to make necessary adjustments, ensuring therapy is as beneficial as possible.
Counteracting Experience Plateaus: Many therapists hit a plateau in skill development after a few years, where they stop improving despite gaining more experience. Deliberate practice breaks through this plateau by encouraging therapists to identify gaps in their knowledge and competence, work on them systematically, and prevent complacency.
Continual Adaptation to Client Diversity: Each client brings unique challenges that require tailored approaches. Deliberate practice helps therapists develop a wider range of strategies, allowing them to better handle diverse client issues such as trauma, cultural differences, or complex mental health diagnoses. This adaptability enhances their effectiveness in various contexts.
Enhanced Self-Awareness and Reflection: Through deliberate practice, therapists can engage in self-reflection, receiving feedback from supervisors, peers, or even recordings of their sessions. This process fosters greater awareness of their own strengths and blind spots, allowing them to refine therapeutic techniques and build deeper therapeutic alliances.
Staying Current and Competent: The field of psychotherapy is constantly evolving, with new research, interventions, and approaches. Deliberate practice encourages therapists to stay engaged with the latest developments, ensuring they remain competent and up-to-date, providing the highest standard of care to their clients.
By engaging in deliberate practice, psychotherapists invest in their long-term growth, deepen their therapeutic impact, and safeguard the quality of care they provide to clients, ensuring continuous professional development and improved mental health outcomes.
Course Content
Deliberate practice is a focused, structured approach to skill improvement. It involves consistently working on specific areas of weakness, receiving feedback, and making gradual adjustments. Unlike regular practice, deliberate practice is intentional, goal-oriented, and often challenging, aimed at achieving mastery over time.
As Mahon explains, DP involves "a focused and systematic approach to skill improvement, requiring practitioners to consistently stretch beyond their current abilities, while incorporating feedback and refinement to achieve mastery." (2022)
Improve your therapeutic skills and effectiveness in handling the most challenging clinical situations and clients.
Assess how effective you are as a practitioner
Use deliberate practice to hone your intervention skills across common therapeutic variables
Learn methods to retain more clients in therapy and reduce early drop out
Develop a framework for lifelong development linked to evidence based practice for supervisors and supervises
Learn to leverage high impact therapy processes
Assess how effective you are as a practitioner
Use deliberate practice to hone your intervention skills across common therapeutic variables
Learn methods to retain more clients in therapy and reduce early drop out
Develop a framework for lifelong development linked to evidence based practice for supervisors and supervises
Learn to leverage high impact therapy processes
Instructor Profile
Daryl Mahon has 15 years’ experience working across human services as a practitioner, manager, researcher and in academia, he has worked across youth, homelessness and community-based addiction services, as a key worker, psychotherapist, addiction counsellor and Team Leader in communities experiencing marginalisation.
He previously held the role of Assistant Academic Director of Psychotherapy in Dublin Business School, where he lectured in various post graduate modules in research, addiction, and counselling.
Daryl is an active researcher and consultant and has a range of publications, including three academic textbooks and major international journal articles across counselling and psychotherapy, trauma, leadership, peer support, and multicultural competencies. Daryl has also published major international articles using large datasets from routine outcome measurement on the development of psychotherapy outcome and therapeutic alliance questionnaires, and their correlation with counselling treatment outcomes for adults and young people
He previously held the role of Assistant Academic Director of Psychotherapy in Dublin Business School, where he lectured in various post graduate modules in research, addiction, and counselling.
Daryl is an active researcher and consultant and has a range of publications, including three academic textbooks and major international journal articles across counselling and psychotherapy, trauma, leadership, peer support, and multicultural competencies. Daryl has also published major international articles using large datasets from routine outcome measurement on the development of psychotherapy outcome and therapeutic alliance questionnaires, and their correlation with counselling treatment outcomes for adults and young people
