A Day in A Life as A Therapist.

 

幾個月前，接受Taiwan Pscychology Network (TPN) 邀稿分享自己一天的工作，
TPN是小小的台灣在美國的從事心理相關工作的社群，
但夠寫稿，也是一個經驗的整理。

寫了一篇A Day in the Life of a Master’s Level Family-Based Therapist
是一篇工作記錄，於是我也騰錄在下面：

I am a family-based (FB) therapist in Pennsylvania, serving the family with an adolescent/child at the risk of being replacement or hospitalized due to serious emotional and behavioral issues. The FB services, including family/individual therapy, crisis intervention, and service coordination, are delivered by a team of two therapists to communities. That is, my partner and I do not meet the family and other service providers in our office but at home, school, and other agencies. The beauty of the job is we have flexible working hours according to schedule of the family and our FB team.

Our agency do not require therapists to be in the office everyday and we can work at home via the home computer. Unless I have training, meeting, or special appointments, I do not usually start my day until 10 or noon since the sessions appointments are scheduled in the afternoon or evening when clients come home from school. I like to put checking emails as the first thing of the workdays before I leave home for appointments or training/meeting. Checking my planner and previewing the plans for each appointment help me organize my daily home visits. The team supervision is scheduled on Monday from 10 am to 12 pm which is really helpful for me to get ready for the week.

About every other week, I will have one 3-hours staff meeting and whole day training from 9 am to 3 pm. Sometimes our team is required to attend court hearings for clients and families. It is painful to have a court hearing day because all court hearings are scheduled at 9 am but it only means the time for checking in. Then we have to wait until whenever being called by the judge. Our team may be able to leave the courthouse by noon or, if no good luck, then 5 pm. It is also painful if we have the school meeting (ex the IEP meeting) which is usually scheduled on before 8 am duo to the school schedule. Once a while, I may get phone calls from school around 8 am.

Our team usually has on the average of 2 to 3 sessions every afternoon/evening. My partner and I like to discuss the session plan during the break of two sessions. We will quickly review the last session and confirm the plan for the next session. The discussion can be short but still helpful. We share thoughts with each other as well as gain support from partners. All sessions end up before 7:30 pm and I get home by 8:30 pm depending on the distance and traffic.

We also answer the crisis call from our family 24/7. We may provide crisis intervention over the phone or leave for the family house or hospital after consulted by the supervisor about the severity. My partner and I try to schedule all appointments on Monday to Thursday and save Friday as a make-up day if the family cancels appointments. Also, I like to focus on all paper work on Friday. If I can get all paper work done on Monday to Thursday, then I will be free on Friday as a reward for hard working.

It was very overwhelming for me to in the first half a year in this position. In addition to adjusting a new job, it took me a whole to learn time management. First I learn my preferred work hours. I prefer schedule three to four appointments back to back from Monday to Thursday and concentrate on paper work on Friday. Also I would rather work on evenings than Saturdays. I found I cannot focus on paper work during the break of two sessions because it is not easy to find a quite with high privacy to type notes on the trip. It is very important to set up schedule limitation with families. I used to be very open with all schedule time and finally I lost my personal life. Another challenge is it is hard to keep regular meals. I may miss the lunch or have a bad appetite because of cold or fast food.

This is my first job after graduate school. I had several related jobs in Taiwan before I got my master degree in counseling but I was exhausted because of the work hour limitation. I can see myself and families I serve are benefited by the flexible work hour. I do not need to take days off if I have a doctor appointment or take a yoga class in the morning. However, in order to avoid a mess of profession and personal life, it takes time to manage life. It was suffering at the beginning but now I quite enjoy my current life style.