Consultation & Tracking Practicum Hours

[Spydra]

I'm curious how other current students are tracking consultation hours in practicum or how those already in the field would suggest tracking them. My practicum offers the opportunity to do consultations with patients and I know this counts as clinical hours, but do I still need to track demographics like I would therapy clients? Or are internship sites only interested in the demographics of therapy patients/clients that are seen more long term? With therapy clients they're assigned to me in advance so I have time to review the intake report and set up a client profile in my tracker, but this doesn't happen with consultations. I don't know ahead of time who I'm going to see and often only see them for 15-20 minutes before being rushed off to the next patient. By the end of the day I just remember how many people I saw, but other details are a blur.

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[smalltownpsych]

I'm curious how other current students are tracking consultation hours in practicum or how those already in the field would suggest tracking them. My practicum offers the opportunity to do consultations with patients and I know this counts as clinical hours, but do I still need to track demographics like I would therapy clients? Or are internship sites only interested in the demographics of therapy patients/clients that are seen more long term? With therapy clients they're assigned to me in advance so I have time to review the intake report and set up a client profile in my tracker, but this doesn't happen with consultations. I don't know ahead of time who I'm going to see and often only see them for 15-20 minutes before being rushed off to the next patient. By the end of the day I just remember how many people I saw, but other details are a blur.

Why not just write a few key details on a notepad? It would probably be wise to do that anyway to document what you did during the day. I am sort of anti-notes during sessions myself, but I always have a notepad for first session even if it is a brief consult. I’m also a bit curious about how those are billed.

 

[Spydra]

I do carry a notepad with me and have maybe a minute to scribble things, but I just haven't gotten organized enough to track demographic information (if I even need it) and I am not sure how best to get it in cases where it isn't obvious. So far demographics are not being presented as part of the brief case report and often I'm not even given enough identifying details to look up their records later (not that there's time to do that). Gender I'm pretty good at guessing, but race/ethnicity, age, and sexual orientation are not always so obvious and it isn't right for me to just assume. The rest of the team is clearly in a hurry so I'm not sure if I'm supposed to just insist on asking during the consult or figure out another solution.

 

[bcliff]

I’m a trainee, and I track demographics for all clients, including those I only briefly consult with. Admittedly, I use Time2Track and only track the details that it prompts me for (i.e., race/ethnicity, sexuality, gender, age, disability status). For more long term cases, I have an Excel sheet, where I track additional details like which site I saw the patient at, whether I saw them on inpatient or outpatient, if there were any noteworthy aspects of the case (to jog my memory when it comes time to submit deidentified reports for APPIC), etc.

 

[Spydra]

I'm using something similar to T2T and am also prompted for the same demographics you mentioned. How are you getting the demographic info when you're actually doing the consultations though? Are you given a report with it, do you have time to look at their records, just guessing?

 

[bcliff]

I'm using something similar to T2T and am also prompted for the same demographics you mentioned. How are you getting the demographic info when you're actually doing the consultations though? Are you given a report with it, do you have time to look at their records, just guessing?

I usually have time to briefly check patients' charts either before or after seeing them and will make a note of salient factors (e.g., <18, < 65, 65+; race; gender). Sexuality I generally leave as missing, unless it specifically comes up during the consult; the way that it’s defined on the APPI is a little problematic to me -- I wish there was a “presumed heterosexual” option to use when classifying patients married/romantically involved with a member of the opposite sex, for whom more comprehensive assessment of sexuality does not occur, to avoid (or at least work towards addressing) bi-erasure. I work with medically complex patients and usually have (at least some) information on disability status, and sometimes I can also glean this information from a review of the patient’s chart.