One key to both learning a new approach to treatment and maintaining our existing skills involves consultation, particularly for EBPs. Don’t just take my word for it, research shows that consultation after a training workshop not only boosts providers’ subjective self-efficacy and intent to use the treatment (Ruzek et al, 2016), but also improves objective fidelity ratings as well (Webster-Stratton et al, 2014).
In today's Staff Perspective, Carin Lefkowitz and Andy Santanello discuss a recent article [Szafranski, D. D., Smith, B. N., Gros, D. F., & Resick, P. A. (2017). High rates of PTSD treatment dropout: A possible red herring?
You have probably heard many Service members and Veterans talk about having family members or close friends who have served. This is not surprising or uncommon to see across many career fields. Having a close friend or relative “sell” you on the benefits of any decision can definitely increase desirability and buy-in. I know that I talked to both active duty Service members and Veterans (to include family members) before I signed on the dotted line.
While reading Dr. Brim’s recent 5-year retrospective of the CDP’s blog, I was reminded that back in 2014 I’d written a blog post summarizing the RAND report on the methodology and baseline sample of the Deployment Life Study. The Deployment Life Study is a longitudinal study launched in 2009 that was designed to look at the antecedents, correlates, and consequences of family readiness across the deployment cycle (where family readiness was defined as the state of “being prepared to effectively navigate the challenges of daily living experienced in the unique context of military service”). The results from this study were actually published about a year ago (it’s amazing how time flies!), so I thought this would be a great opportunity to take a deeper look at the results of the study.
It seems like everyone is carrying a smartphone these days. Some of the attributes that make these devices an asset to therapy include they’re portable, acceptable, always on (this benefit is probably up for discussion), low cost, programmable, audio and video output, user-friendliness, and ease of use (Boschen, 2008). More and more we are able to recommend and guide our patients through various evidence-based psychotherapies (EBPs) with the help of evidence-based mobile health applications or so-called “apps”. For providers, we now have the same accessibility of a tool that can help us implement self-care practices in our day.