What are the benefits of professional conversations with peers and other professionals?
There are many reasons that professional conversations and activities (e.g., volunteering in professional organizations and committees or peer study groups and consultation groups, or the like) are sustaining to clinicians. Clinical work is private and confidential and can be lonely or isolating. Other clinicians who know our work can provide support and development but can also act as referral sources. And most importantly, after one becomes licensed and leaves the intensity and support of training behind, there is still a need to consider the working of one’s own mind, work, and relationships ongoingly so that we can provide the best treatment to our patients and avoid burnout.
If you are feeling burnt out, lonely, frustrated, locked into an impasse with a patient or confronted with problematic dynamics and difficult feelings with one or more patients, consultation can be very helpful. And even if you are not, consultation can help you find more freedom, joy and creativity in the work. There are also pragmatic aspects of the professional practice of psychotherapy that benefit from professional consultation. If you are struggling to build or develop your practice, or you are considering issues related to fees or billing or are considering retirement, closing a practice or moving entirely to telehealth, these concerns are often better addressed by more minds thinking together.
A unique kind of consultation I offer is a confidential ethics consultation. As a member of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California’s ethics committee, each of us offers confidential free consultations about ethical concerns. In these conversations we not only provide a trusted ear but we take these concerns to the larger full ethics committee for discussion in confidence and report back our advice. This is a free service and can often help clinicians (and patients) work through concerns before ethical issues become a larger problem.
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