Today I interviewed Scott Miller about what works in counselling and psychotherapeutic practice and how to boost one’s effectiveness as a practitioner. Scott is the founder of international consortium of clinicians, researchers, and educators (ICCE), which is dedicated to promoting excellence in behavioural health. He is the author of many books, the most recent one being Better Results: Using deliberate practice to improve therapeutic effectiveness. In Scott’s words deliberate practice is a systematic approach for improving psychotherapy outcomes, one clinician at a time. Better Results contains a step-by-step guide to deliberate practice and demonstrates how to create an individualised professional development plan to improve the quality of clinical service by using client outcome data.
In the interview we discuss the content of the book with topics ranging from deliberate practice, the skills needed for effective therapeutic practice, how to measure outcomes and what makes one practitioner more effective than others.
Click on the link below to hear the interview.
I personally find the idea of deliberate practice to be of particular interest since regular practice might include potentially mindless repetitions, whereas deliberate practice requires focused attention and has the specific aim of improving performance. It is very relevant in the broad field of counselling and psychotherapy as it is often the case that therapy training centres have restricted amounts of teaching time for dedicated and highly focused one to one tuition. Even in group supervision in such places trainees can potentially remain in a defended position without really engaging with their own strengths and weaknesses, thus limiting their own professional development.
See also
To-do lists and how to help your brain run more efficiently
Noel Bell is a UKCP accredited psychotherapist based in London and can be contacted on 07852407140 or by email noel@noelbell.net
