If you’re a mental healthcare practitioner, then it’s likely that your top priority is ensuring patients have access to the care they need. It’s also crucial that patients are paired with effective treatments to improve their overall outcome.
By keeping these key principles in mind, you can improve patient outcomes and help your patients overcome their mental health challenges.
When a patient first sits down with you, keep in mind that they are in a very vulnerable position, especially first-time patients. They are probably nervous, unsure of what to expect from therapy, and they may be feeling a bit apprehensive. After all, the therapist-patient relationship does take some time to develop.
As their practitioner, you can guide the conversation by first asking what their goals are from treatment. It's best to get as specific as possible.
For instance, are they looking for ways of dealing with anxiety, but aren’t interested in taking medication? Are they interested in developing healthy coping mechanisms to heal past trauma? Or, perhaps they want to build the courage to make a major decision in their life.
In some cases, patients haven’t even thought this far into the future, or they don’t realize that goal-setting is an important part of therapy and managing mental health. Helping them set goals in the beginning can have major effects on their overall outcome.
First, it allows you to understand what they want out of therapy. Second, they’ll have a better understanding of what to expect from you, and whether or not your methods are a good fit. Lastly, setting goals can shift a patient’s mindset, and help them take an active role in overcoming their mental health challenges.
If you want to improve patient outcomes, then measuring progress should be a top priority. Setting clear goals in the beginning makes it much easier to track progress over time and identify areas that need improvement.
Measuring progress is also a great opportunity to revisit old goals and set new milestones so the patient doesn't plateau. We recommend using technology to assist during this process.
At MyOutcomes, our software is designed specifically to empower practitioners in the mental and behavioral healthcare fields. With our easy-to-use app technology, your clients can provide feedback on their perception of their progress. This includes whether they feel they’ve achieved their therapeutic goals, how they’re functioning on a personal level, the quality of their relationships, and much more.
This information is then displayed and measured on a continuous graph, so you can easily track progress at a glance.
Mental healthcare practitioners often fall short in this area. Most practitioners do not incorporate any type of patient satisfaction surveys.
Without this, it can be difficult to truly gauge whether the patient is satisfied with the mental health services they have received. If they are dissatisfied, they are less likely to share this information with you, which jeopardizes their outcome.
This is another area where technology can help. MyOutcomes provides practitioners with software that allows patients to give feedback on a session-by-session basis. You can view this feedback immediately, allowing you to adjust your treatments and approaches accordingly.
At MyOutcomes, we are committed to helping those in the mental healthcare field improve patient outcomes and simplify outcome reporting. Our solutions are ideal for both in-person and telehealth sessions.
Book a free consultation today to learn more.