Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Using Psychometric Measures to Help Your Clients with Hilah Kate Kaufman, PhD

Transcript

Using Psychometric Measures to Help Your Clients with Hilah Kate Kaufman, PhD · The Trauma Therapist

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Trauma Therapists podcast. My name is gimickperson
0:04
Speaker 1: I interview incredible people who've dedicated their lives to helping
0:07
Speaker 1: those who've been impacted by trauma. A big thank you
0:11
Speaker 1: to our sponsors and our guests who are supporting this
0:14
Speaker 1: show five four, three, two and one, Our folks, welcome
0:19
Speaker 1: back to the podcast. Very excited to have as my
0:21
Speaker 1: guest today, Doctor Hila Kate Kaufman.
0:24
Speaker 2: Hila, welcome, Thank you, Very excited to be here today.
0:27
Speaker 1: Awesome. Doctor Kaufman is a clinical psychologist and associate professor
0:31
Speaker 1: at George Mason University whose work centers on trauma, resilience,
0:36
Speaker 1: and adaptation across the lifespan. She integrates developmental and clinical
0:41
Speaker 1: science to better understand how individuals respond to adversity and
0:45
Speaker 1: how trauma informed approaches can support healing. In addition to
0:48
Speaker 1: her academic role, doctor Kaufman is involved with our sponsor today,
0:52
Speaker 1: Novo psych platform, focused on improving mental health care through
0:56
Speaker 1: evidence based assessment and measurement tools for clinicians. Work reflects
1:00
Speaker 1: a strong commitment to bridging research and practice to enhance
1:04
Speaker 1: outcomes in real world settings. All right, Heila, just obviously
1:08
Speaker 1: a little bit about you before we get going share
1:10
Speaker 1: with our listeners where you're from originally and where you
1:13
Speaker 1: are currently, and we'll dive in.
1:15
Speaker 3: So I'm originally from Houston, Texas, and I came to
1:19
Speaker 3: the DC area for graduate school and never really left,
1:23
Speaker 3: and so I live now in Northern Virginia outside the
1:25
Speaker 3: DC area.
1:27
Speaker 1: Okay, involved in the government, Nope, that you can mention.
1:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know a lot of people in this area.
1:34
Speaker 1: We are, all right, So we're going to get into
1:37
Speaker 1: all things novo psychic and psychometrics and how that's relevant
1:42
Speaker 1: for all clinicians. But before we do, I'm really curious
1:44
Speaker 1: about how the heck you got into this field. How
1:47
Speaker 1: did this start? How did your interest in psychology start?
1:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really great question.
1:53
Speaker 3: I would say my interest really started because of my grandfather,
1:56
Speaker 3: who I was incredibly close with growing up. He was
2:00
Speaker 3: a Holocaust survivor and spent years in concentration camps and
2:05
Speaker 3: it was, you know, the only survivor in his family,
2:08
Speaker 3: and so growing up listening to his stories and seeing
2:12
Speaker 3: his really unbreakable will and his love of life and
2:16
Speaker 3: how trauma shaped him but also made him just such
2:20
Speaker 3: an incredible person, really impacted me and was a real
2:25
Speaker 3: driver in me wanting to get into the mental health field.
2:28
Speaker 3: You know, all these questions that I had about how
2:31
Speaker 3: how does someone go through something, you know, so unbelievably traumatic,
2:35
Speaker 3: but make it out on the other end and devote
2:38
Speaker 3: their life to helping other people really stayed with me
2:43
Speaker 3: and made me just fascinated by how trauma shapes people,
2:48
Speaker 3: families and also across generations.
2:52
Speaker 1: How first of all, yeah, I mean crazy and amazing
2:59
Speaker 1: and so inspiring. When how old were you when you
3:02
Speaker 1: first kind of saw that or thought of that.
3:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's hard to even pinpoint and age.
3:08
Speaker 3: It's always just been part of my family story, kind
3:12
Speaker 3: of just woven into the fabric of who my family is.
3:16
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'd say for as long as I can remember,
3:20
Speaker 3: And you know, I was just very very close with him,
3:23
Speaker 3: So I was always talking to him and just fascinated
3:27
Speaker 3: by how he just never let it break him and
3:30
Speaker 3: how he rebuilt his life and how he approached life
3:35
Speaker 3: was incredible to me.
3:38
Speaker 1: So what do you do with that? You get to
3:40
Speaker 1: school or you start thinking I'm gonna do you? What
3:42
Speaker 1: do you do with that? What do you say to yourself?
3:44
Speaker 2: Yeah?
3:45
Speaker 3: So I think that those questions that I had just
3:48
Speaker 3: were very very naturally led me into the field of
3:51
Speaker 3: mental health, and I decided that I wanted to become
3:54
Speaker 3: a therapist, and I wanted to help other people who
3:57
Speaker 3: had experienced trauma and do that from a therapy perspective,
4:03
Speaker 3: And so I went to graduate school, I got my
4:05
Speaker 3: peaching clinical psychology, and much of my early work was
4:09
Speaker 3: working with children and families who had experienced various kinds
4:12
Speaker 3: of trauma, abuse, neglect, domestic violence. And that was very
4:17
Speaker 3: much so where I was early on in my career,
4:19
Speaker 3: and I absolutely loved it.
4:23
Speaker 1: So you're jumping in the deep end. I mean, that's
4:26
Speaker 1: very intense when you first start. Did your grandfather kind
4:31
Speaker 1: of give you this foundational confidence or support or strength
4:35
Speaker 1: that you brought into that. How was it like initially
4:40
Speaker 1: hearing those stories with those clients. That's tough.
4:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that the foundation that he gave me
4:46
Speaker 3: was that trauma is not just about the symptoms and
4:51
Speaker 3: the difficult parts, that it's also about recovery and meaning
4:54
Speaker 3: making and resilience and coping. So there's sort of two
4:59
Speaker 3: sides of the pin, and I very much so was
5:03
Speaker 3: focused on helping people find that other side the coping
5:07
Speaker 3: and the recovery part of trauma. So it absolutely gave
5:10
Speaker 3: me that foundational framework of seeing how he coped with
5:14
Speaker 3: it and how just across generations in my family we
5:19
Speaker 3: coped with it.
5:20
Speaker 1: Can you pluck out a particular story that resonates with
5:24
Speaker 1: you even to this day?
5:26
Speaker 3: During that time, yeah, yeah, I worked with many families
5:32
Speaker 3: who had experienced trauma, and I have, you know, memories
5:35
Speaker 3: of sometimes having a grandparent, a parent and a young
5:38
Speaker 3: child in a therapy room who had gone through domestic
5:42
Speaker 3: violence and helping them cope with that and helping them
5:46
Speaker 3: with the resources to make meaning and rebuild. You know,
5:50
Speaker 3: those are some early clinical memories that I drop.
5:54
Speaker 2: On in my work now.
5:58
Speaker 1: Oftentimes not all, but many therapists, when confronted with those
6:06
Speaker 1: types of situations, are drawn to and for all the
6:10
Speaker 1: best intentions are drawn to really understanding conflicted how to
6:16
Speaker 1: what to do, how to care, how to help for
6:19
Speaker 1: the client. There's a I think there's a very human
6:22
Speaker 1: pull to want to comfort and disclose personal information or stories.
6:29
Speaker 1: What was you How did you navigate that as a
6:31
Speaker 1: young clinician.
6:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question.
6:34
Speaker 3: I think that it helped me have a lot of
6:37
Speaker 3: empathy and understanding for the process of trauma recovery, and
6:42
Speaker 3: it really guided the way that I would, you know,
6:47
Speaker 3: manage and help clients figure it out. And I think
6:50
Speaker 3: that what also stuck with me and the way that
6:53
Speaker 3: it impacted me is that I always had these these
6:55
Speaker 3: broader questions as part of the therapy process, which was,
6:59
Speaker 3: you know, how do I know that the therapy that
7:01
Speaker 3: I'm providing is working? How do I know when to
7:06
Speaker 3: shift gears, when to pivot? How do I know when
7:11
Speaker 3: a family or a client I'm working with needs a
7:13
Speaker 3: different form of therapy? And so I think that's one
7:17
Speaker 3: of the main ways that it.
7:18
Speaker 2: Also impacted me as a.
7:21
Speaker 3: Therapist is that it gave me these broader questions and
7:24
Speaker 3: that ultimately led me down the professional pathway that I'm
7:27
Speaker 3: on now, which is to help answer those questions and
7:31
Speaker 3: help other clinicians answer those broader questions about therapy effectiveness
7:36
Speaker 3: and how do we know that what we're doing with
7:39
Speaker 3: our clients is working? And how do we sharpen all
7:42
Speaker 3: the tools that we have as therapists.
7:46
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's a wonderful segue. So was there how
7:51
Speaker 1: did that unfold for you? How did you start studying psychometrics, assessments,
7:57
Speaker 1: et cetera. How did that come into play for you?
7:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, as I was working with clients, especially with trauma work,
8:04
Speaker 3: I had all these big questions of, like I said,
8:07
Speaker 3: is what I'm doing working?
8:09
Speaker 2: Is it affective?
8:10
Speaker 3: I know that I'm using an evidence based treatment, and
8:13
Speaker 3: I know that I have all the skill I've learned
8:15
Speaker 3: all the skills, and I know that I'm you know,
8:18
Speaker 3: trying my best, but how how.
8:19
Speaker 2: Do I really know? I wanted.
8:23
Speaker 3: A more objective tool to help me, and so I
8:27
Speaker 3: naturally started incorporating measures as part of my therapy work.
8:31
Speaker 3: And as part of that, I really learned so much
8:35
Speaker 3: in the research about how using measures as part of
8:38
Speaker 3: the therapy process just enhances the therapeutic process. And so,
8:44
Speaker 3: you know, really did a deep dive into all that research.
8:48
Speaker 3: But what I also found, and this is a clinician
8:51
Speaker 3: I'm probably dating myself, you know, twenty years ago, I
8:54
Speaker 3: found that it was really hard to give patients measures,
8:59
Speaker 3: you know, both at the start of treatment and really
9:03
Speaker 3: across time because you know, all the paper measures and
9:06
Speaker 3: I was hand scoring and then doing my best to
9:09
Speaker 3: score things and create graphs and excel it just it
9:13
Speaker 3: wasn't feasible, it wasn't scalable. The admin portion of it
9:18
Speaker 3: was just too difficult. And I remember just thinking, I
9:22
Speaker 3: this is helping me answer these important questions about care
9:26
Speaker 3: and the research. You know, now there's almost thirty years
9:29
Speaker 3: of research telling us that, you know, the routine use
9:32
Speaker 3: of measures across care to help inform treatment decisions, what
9:35
Speaker 3: we call measurement based care. We know it works and
9:38
Speaker 3: we know we should be doing it, but I can't.
9:41
Speaker 3: I can't really do it very well. And so that
9:44
Speaker 3: led me towards technology, using technology computers to help us
9:49
Speaker 3: do that. And so I've been in the field of
9:53
Speaker 3: digital mental health, working on platforms that support measurement based
9:58
Speaker 3: care now for almost ten years and I absolutely love it.
10:03
Speaker 1: So to give some foundation for our listeners, what is
10:08
Speaker 1: your position in Novo Psych.
10:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, So within Novo Psych, I'm a measurement based care
10:14
Speaker 3: research fellow. So I support the research and development of
10:20
Speaker 3: incorporating measures into our platform. So when I say a
10:24
Speaker 3: measure that could be you know also term psychometric Assessment
10:29
Speaker 3: tool questionnaire. Really it's a set of questions that's designed
10:33
Speaker 3: for a specific purpose to support a mental health provider
10:36
Speaker 3: so how depressed is somebody?
10:38
Speaker 2: Do they have a PhD?
10:41
Speaker 3: And so we have at Novo Psych in our platform
10:45
Speaker 3: over one hundred and fifty psychometric assessments that clinician can
10:49
Speaker 3: use as part of their therapy work. And so I
10:53
Speaker 3: help to you know, research those measures, digitize them and
10:57
Speaker 3: ensure that clinicians can use them. Meaning so we do
11:01
Speaker 3: all the work for clinicians so they can just go
11:04
Speaker 3: in and use the measures.
11:06
Speaker 1: So who can you who are they for?
11:10
Speaker 2: Yeah?
11:11
Speaker 3: So Novo Psych the measures in the Novo Psych Assessment
11:14
Speaker 3: Library can be used by any type of clinicians, psychologists,
11:18
Speaker 3: social workers, psychiatrists, licensed professional counselors, also, allied health professionals,
11:25
Speaker 3: occupational therapists. Really, anyone who's providing mental health care can
11:32
Speaker 3: use the measures in their work.
11:33
Speaker 1: Okay, what about coaches?
11:36
Speaker 2: Absolutely? So anyone really, anyone, anyone, anyone?
11:40
Speaker 1: Okay, okay. And I want to distinguish because I think
11:43
Speaker 1: sometimes when people think of assessments or tools or measures.
11:49
Speaker 1: Are we talking about a forty page psychometric full battery test.
11:54
Speaker 1: We're talking about one page, ten set of questions or both?
11:59
Speaker 2: Love that question?
12:00
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think that historically when we think about measures,
12:03
Speaker 3: we think about long eyed Q tests or the guy
12:07
Speaker 3: which is you know right.
12:08
Speaker 2: Questions and no.
12:09
Speaker 3: So what distinguishes the measures and of a psych is
12:13
Speaker 3: that these are tend to be brief selfhie measures that
12:18
Speaker 3: usually take just one to a few minutes to administer.
12:21
Speaker 3: We certainly do have some longer measures, but by and large,
12:25
Speaker 3: these are measures that are designed to be easy and
12:28
Speaker 3: quick for uh, you know, for clients to complete. Your
12:34
Speaker 3: clinicians can go in, generate a link, have it sent
12:37
Speaker 3: to their clients. They can complete it on any electronic device,
12:41
Speaker 3: you know, a minute on their phone before a therapy session,
12:44
Speaker 3: and the results are automatically scored and graft and a
12:48
Speaker 3: report is sent to the clinician.
12:51
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is really cool. So if we can
12:57
Speaker 1: give us an idea of how this might be useful
13:02
Speaker 1: for a clinician, a practitioner who has a client who's
13:08
Speaker 1: experienced trauma of some kind. I'll let you decide what
13:11
Speaker 1: type of trauma? Why would they want to use it?
13:15
Speaker 1: When do they know when to use it?
13:18
Speaker 2: Sure?
13:19
Speaker 3: So I'll start with I think the most important question,
13:21
Speaker 3: which is why use measures routinely as part of your care?
13:26
Speaker 3: And the list is extremely long. What we know about
13:29
Speaker 3: using measures routinely as part of care is that, first
13:32
Speaker 3: of all, it improves therapeutic alliance. So what I mean
13:35
Speaker 3: by that is that improves the relationship between the client
13:39
Speaker 3: and their therapists. And what that does ultimately, and what
13:42
Speaker 3: we know from the research, is that it reduces client dropout.
13:45
Speaker 3: So people stay in treatment when measures are used routinely.
13:50
Speaker 3: Why why a lot of researchers looked at that.
13:55
Speaker 2: You know.
13:55
Speaker 3: The mechanism at play that we believe is that it
13:58
Speaker 3: really surfaces what is going on that would otherwise be missed.
14:02
Speaker 3: So I like to think of it as a signal
14:04
Speaker 3: alarm system that it helps clients feel heard, it helps
14:10
Speaker 3: them be more engaged in treatment as well when they
14:15
Speaker 3: are completing let's say, a trauma measure like the Life
14:18
Speaker 3: Events checklist you know, every month and they are What
14:23
Speaker 3: I haven't said yet, which is really important, is that
14:25
Speaker 3: the results of these measures are not just designed to
14:28
Speaker 3: be reviewed by the clinician.
14:31
Speaker 2: And that's it. The way that novopsych is set up.
14:34
Speaker 3: All our reports, all our graphs, all the information, it's
14:37
Speaker 3: designed to be reviewed collaboratively between the client and the therapist.
14:42
Speaker 3: And that's really what distinguishes measurement based care. It's not
14:47
Speaker 3: just assigning some measures and they go to the therapist
14:50
Speaker 3: and then the client never hears about it again, or
14:54
Speaker 3: maybe it's mentioned in passing.
14:55
Speaker 2: This is a.
14:56
Speaker 3: Collaborative process of review repeatedly over time, so not just
15:02
Speaker 3: the beginning of therapy and then maybe at the end.
15:06
Speaker 3: It's really that in between session to session.
15:09
Speaker 2: Review of results.
15:10
Speaker 3: That is what keeps, what helps the relationship, prevents drop out,
15:16
Speaker 3: helps surface information that would otherwise be missed. It it
15:20
Speaker 3: helps clinicians to be more precise and the care that
15:24
Speaker 3: they are providing. And so what that does on the
15:26
Speaker 3: other end to clients is that they feel more heard,
15:31
Speaker 3: more understood. They often say, like, you know, just kind
15:36
Speaker 3: of seeing is believing.
15:37
Speaker 2: You know, there are.
15:38
Speaker 3: So many thoughts, so much going on. Oftentimes in individuals
15:43
Speaker 3: of or experienced trauma PTSD, they've been misdiagnosed, or their
15:47
Speaker 3: diagnosis has been totally missed for years, maybe they've been
15:51
Speaker 3: treated for something else, and so to see the data
15:55
Speaker 3: over time as part of their care is really power full.
16:00
Speaker 3: And we hear that again and again both from clinicians
16:03
Speaker 3: and clients when they use novo.
16:05
Speaker 1: Psych Can you again kind of pluck out an example
16:10
Speaker 1: of someone you worked with. I could really see that,
16:14
Speaker 1: you know, beginning to work with someone introducing a particular
16:18
Speaker 1: measure and reviewing it with the client and something coming
16:26
Speaker 1: up and them saying either one, oh, I never really
16:30
Speaker 1: thought about that, or maybe they didn't want to disclose that,
16:34
Speaker 1: and that comes out. I'm just curious. From your own
16:37
Speaker 1: experience specifically.
16:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I think that this type of care,
16:44
Speaker 3: this framework of giving measures routinely over time as part
16:49
Speaker 3: of care, lends itself really well to trauma work, and
16:51
Speaker 3: I've seen that firsthand. So I'll give an example where
16:55
Speaker 3: you know, have a client coming in and you know
16:59
Speaker 3: they're initially there where you know, want to find out
17:02
Speaker 3: if they have PTSD, and that's part of what we're
17:04
Speaker 3: going to be working on. And so what I normally
17:07
Speaker 3: do is just at a baseline, give them a measure
17:10
Speaker 3: like the LEC five, the Life Events Checklist, or the
17:13
Speaker 3: aces Q the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire, which look really
17:19
Speaker 3: screens for potentially traumatic events that they would have experienced.
17:24
Speaker 3: We also have some great measures that look at protective
17:28
Speaker 3: factors that they may have experienced, which I think is
17:31
Speaker 3: equally important. And so that is something that I would
17:34
Speaker 3: do routinely, you know.
17:37
Speaker 1: At yeah, Okay, not to interrupt you, but so each
17:41
Speaker 1: of those measures are how long? How many questions? And
17:44
Speaker 1: how would you administer that?
17:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, so each of them ten to fifteen questions, maybe
17:50
Speaker 3: takes a minute or two, and I would yeah, I
17:52
Speaker 3: wouldn't give all of them. So, you know, I've gone
17:56
Speaker 3: different points in my work as a clinician. I've gone
17:59
Speaker 3: with one measure or another, and sometimes it depends on
18:02
Speaker 3: the client and the broader questions. And so I think
18:05
Speaker 3: that's also a really great part of novo psych is
18:08
Speaker 3: that we have a good list that a clinician, based
18:12
Speaker 3: on their theoretical orientation with a type of trauma work,
18:15
Speaker 3: what's important to them as a clinician, that they work
18:17
Speaker 3: on with their clients to select the right measure. So
18:21
Speaker 3: those are examples of kind of the initial screening measures
18:26
Speaker 3: that I would give. I personally really like the life
18:28
Speaker 3: Events checklist. It helps you give as a clinician really
18:32
Speaker 3: understand what kinds of experiences, potentially traumatic experience someone may
18:38
Speaker 3: have gone through that we need to explore. More So,
18:42
Speaker 3: right at the start of therapy, I already have this
18:44
Speaker 3: great information that we can reference. And what I would
18:48
Speaker 3: do is I would before the first session or maybe
18:52
Speaker 3: as part of the intake process, they would get a
18:55
Speaker 3: link to complete a battery of measures.
18:58
Speaker 1: And so they're not doing it with you in the office.
19:02
Speaker 2: I like to do it before shortly before.
19:04
Speaker 3: But absolutely novo psych measures can be given, you know,
19:08
Speaker 3: in the waiting room or in the room itself.
19:10
Speaker 2: You hand them a tablet and they can complete the messages.
19:13
Speaker 3: So it's really designed to work with however, you provide
19:18
Speaker 3: care if you prefer to have the information before and
19:20
Speaker 3: then review it, or if you prefer in session or
19:24
Speaker 3: you know, the waiting room.
19:26
Speaker 1: Now forgive the very basic question here, but what's the
19:35
Speaker 1: difference between administering, say a ten question questionnaire assessment measure
19:43
Speaker 1: or the clinician simply asking those questions, yeah, or not
19:48
Speaker 1: even asking those questions, but just asking questions and having
19:53
Speaker 1: that introductory initial.
19:56
Speaker 2: Session that No, I absolutely love that question.
19:59
Speaker 3: That's really at the core of what why novo psych exists.
20:04
Speaker 3: And so this is absolutely not meant to replace the
20:09
Speaker 3: clinical conversation, clinical intuition, the information that the client provides.
20:15
Speaker 3: These measures are meant to be and I like to
20:18
Speaker 3: think of it as as giving the clinician and extra
20:21
Speaker 3: sharp acts in their toolbox that helps them to be
20:24
Speaker 3: more precise and quicker in arriving at a diagnosis, figuring
20:30
Speaker 3: out what to do, and ensuring that nothing is missed. So,
20:34
Speaker 3: you know, we only have so many so much time
20:37
Speaker 3: in a therapy session, and there's often so much to assess.
20:41
Speaker 3: You know, individuals with PTSD often have other difficulties, whether
20:45
Speaker 3: it's substance abuse, depression, anxiety, there's there ADHD, there's a
20:51
Speaker 3: lot to get through. There's a lot of questions to ask,
20:54
Speaker 3: and having validated gold standard measures that you can give
21:00
Speaker 3: at the start or throughout treatment as needed to help
21:03
Speaker 3: you arrive at you know, clinical decision making quicker is
21:09
Speaker 3: you know, just incredibly effective. You know, we know there's
21:14
Speaker 3: research that shows that clients who routinely complete measures reach
21:18
Speaker 3: remission sometimes two and a half faster than clients who
21:21
Speaker 3: do not, And it's you know, can be a really
21:26
Speaker 3: really effective tool alongside the clinical What it also does
21:31
Speaker 3: is it helps you ask questions in a standardized way
21:35
Speaker 3: each time across session with an individual client and also
21:39
Speaker 3: across your you know, client population, so you're getting precise,
21:45
Speaker 3: standard information to help drive the decisions that you make
21:48
Speaker 3: as a clinician.
21:52
Speaker 1: Why does it help or why might it help someone
21:56
Speaker 1: achieve quicker results?
21:59
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that one of the main mechanisms that
22:03
Speaker 3: it helps you reach quicker results is that you're getting
22:06
Speaker 3: sometimes real time information about how the individual is doing. So,
22:12
Speaker 3: for example, if you're giving a measure like the PCL
22:15
Speaker 3: five the PTSD Checklist, which is a gold standard measure
22:20
Speaker 3: of PTSD symptoms, giving it on a monthly basis, and
22:26
Speaker 3: as you're progressing in treatment, you are catching right away
22:29
Speaker 3: if something is going off the rails, if something is
22:32
Speaker 3: going off track, so you know, while you know, we're
22:37
Speaker 3: of course using our clinical judgment and the patient may
22:40
Speaker 3: say I'm doing better or I'm doing worse, you have
22:43
Speaker 3: this extra objective way to draw upon and making your decisions.
22:49
Speaker 3: And what we know is that having that additional detail
22:53
Speaker 3: helps us provide more effective care and respond very quickly.
22:58
Speaker 3: So instead of going a few months where we think
23:01
Speaker 3: things are going well with our clients, we can respond
23:06
Speaker 3: immediately really and we have these rich conversations with the client.
23:11
Speaker 3: Maybe we discover that, you know, the reason things are
23:15
Speaker 3: not improving in treatment is because they're not sleeping well
23:19
Speaker 3: or they're you know, something else stressful, or they're having
23:23
Speaker 3: difficulties within attention, and so we're able to then do
23:27
Speaker 3: a further assessment of those challenges and incorporate that as
23:30
Speaker 3: part of care. So it's the ability to surface what
23:36
Speaker 3: is sometimes hard to put into words, what has not
23:40
Speaker 3: been disclosed yet, what you know, what else might be
23:43
Speaker 3: going on. That are all part of the mechanisms of
23:46
Speaker 3: effective measurement based care.
23:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that, all right. So people listening to
23:51
Speaker 1: this are clinician therapists of all kinds. Let's say there's
23:57
Speaker 1: someone out there who's like, all right, this is in
23:59
Speaker 1: life lightning for me. What if I come to Novopsych,
24:07
Speaker 1: How do I use Novo psych. What's the best way
24:10
Speaker 1: I've never let's say I've never administered a measure before.
24:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so I'd say Novo psych is a perfect
24:20
Speaker 3: starting point if you're a clinician who is never or
24:23
Speaker 3: any provider of care who is never administered a measure before,
24:27
Speaker 3: because we have done all the work to make this
24:30
Speaker 3: as smooth of a process to implement as possible. So
24:34
Speaker 3: if you go to Novo Psych novopsych dot com, you
24:37
Speaker 3: go to our assessment library, encourage you to look through
24:40
Speaker 3: the different measures that we have. Like I said, we
24:43
Speaker 3: have great offering a measures for folks working with individuals
24:47
Speaker 3: with trauma, and I always think it's best to start
24:50
Speaker 3: by self administering some measures. I think it's good to
24:53
Speaker 3: understand the process of the measures and what it feels
24:58
Speaker 3: like to decide as a clinician, what is a measure
25:02
Speaker 3: or measures that would be good for you to incorporate
25:04
Speaker 3: as part of your work as a clinician. I think
25:07
Speaker 3: I also recommend not you know, not feeling like you
25:10
Speaker 3: need to have a you know, fifteen twenty measures or
25:13
Speaker 3: just because we have this many measures does mean that
25:15
Speaker 3: a clinician should be using all of them. It's really
25:18
Speaker 3: about you know, self reflection as a clinician and thinking
25:22
Speaker 3: what would be best for your client, maybe choosing one
25:24
Speaker 3: or two measures. One that I recommend for your listeners
25:28
Speaker 3: is the Trauma Recovery Measure. So you know, we can
25:32
Speaker 3: measure the symptoms of PTSD, but what the.
25:34
Speaker 2: Trauma Recovery Measure does.
25:36
Speaker 3: It really looks at stages of recovery as part of
25:40
Speaker 3: trauma work over time, so things like you know, relationships
25:44
Speaker 3: with others and emotion regulation. It really focuses more on
25:49
Speaker 3: the positive aspects of recovery as well. So choosing a measure,
25:54
Speaker 3: maybe starting off with one client or a group of clients,
25:57
Speaker 3: and you know, starting to use it regularly and seeing
26:02
Speaker 3: the impact of the care you provide, seeing what conversations
26:07
Speaker 3: come up with your clients, seeing if it's helping you
26:10
Speaker 3: to provide better, different care. And I think that's a
26:16
Speaker 3: good easy starting point. And what you'll also see is
26:19
Speaker 3: that for every measure, we have these really wonderful profiles,
26:23
Speaker 3: so you're not just administering a measure blindly. We provide
26:27
Speaker 3: whether you've never used a measure or you're a very
26:30
Speaker 3: experienced clinician with lots of research experience, we our profiles
26:35
Speaker 3: explain everything you need to know about a measure, how
26:38
Speaker 3: to use it, how to interpret it, how.
26:39
Speaker 2: To score it.
26:41
Speaker 3: And also when you get the results, you're not just
26:44
Speaker 3: getting some numbers. We have a whole team of psychologists, psychometricians, researchers,
26:51
Speaker 3: and we spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about
26:54
Speaker 3: how to present the results so that they make sense
26:58
Speaker 3: as part of care, you can incorporate it as part
27:02
Speaker 3: of your care, and also so that you can show
27:05
Speaker 3: the report and share it with your clients so that
27:08
Speaker 3: they they get it. I often like to think of
27:12
Speaker 3: what we do as like the blood pressure cuff for
27:15
Speaker 3: mental health. We're going to your GP and they just
27:19
Speaker 3: looked at you and said, I think you have high
27:21
Speaker 3: blood pressure. You would you would, you know, not think
27:24
Speaker 3: that that was a legitimate medical advice. You know, our
27:28
Speaker 3: medical doctors they use thermometers and blood pressures and weight
27:32
Speaker 3: and labs. And in mental health care, we all, you know,
27:35
Speaker 3: for a very long time, we haven't had a way
27:38
Speaker 3: to incorporate those additional metrics into care, and novo psych
27:42
Speaker 3: makes that possible. These are you know, really gives clinicians
27:47
Speaker 3: those tools they need to have sort of an extra
27:49
Speaker 3: dashboard of information when they're talking to their clients and
27:54
Speaker 3: when they are trying to decide what to do treatment planning,
27:58
Speaker 3: pivoting other resources, other skills for their clients.
28:05
Speaker 1: What's really kind of inspired me and impressed me by
28:09
Speaker 1: what you said is the way these measures can be
28:13
Speaker 1: incorporated as opposed to, you know, supplanting the work that
28:21
Speaker 1: a clinician or a therapist does. No. This is something
28:24
Speaker 1: if you want to deliver optimal care, the best care
28:29
Speaker 1: you can and to see what Like you said, initially,
28:35
Speaker 1: how do I know what's if anything is working? This
28:38
Speaker 1: is something you can add in. It's not removing the
28:43
Speaker 1: human being of you know, in the in the room.
28:47
Speaker 1: It's giving you, like you said, another tool in the toolbox.
28:50
Speaker 1: To overuse a hackneyed phrase, but I think that's very
28:53
Speaker 1: powerful for people to hear because correct me if I'm wrong.
28:57
Speaker 1: There can be the sense that oh, you know, this
29:00
Speaker 1: is maybe too cold or assessment, or it's going to
29:04
Speaker 1: take the personal personal out of the room. But no,
29:10
Speaker 1: this is putting more what knowledge, intuition, heart into the
29:16
Speaker 1: treatment you're delivering.
29:18
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that's what we hear from therapists and clients
29:22
Speaker 3: all the time. Is the opposite of it, the opposite
29:27
Speaker 3: of the concern that this is reducing anybody to numbers
29:30
Speaker 3: or moving the clinicians judgment or taking away from the
29:36
Speaker 3: clinical relationship. It really is what we know from decades
29:41
Speaker 3: of research and what we see. The feedback we get
29:44
Speaker 3: as a company is that it really helps people see
29:49
Speaker 3: their progress over time, and as a clinician, it helps us,
29:53
Speaker 3: you know, it gives us that feedback. It helps us
29:56
Speaker 3: know when to stay the course, when we need to
30:00
Speaker 3: have another conversation when we need to maybe assess for
30:04
Speaker 3: something else. It helps ultimately make treatment more effective and
30:10
Speaker 3: improve the relationship between clinicians and clients. And that's really
30:14
Speaker 3: the mission of Novo Psych is we want to support
30:17
Speaker 3: clinicians and improving clinical outcomes for their clients. And so
30:22
Speaker 3: you know, everything within Novo Psych. We have some other
30:25
Speaker 3: great features as well. We have an AI scribe that
30:28
Speaker 3: helps with note taking, We have an AI Digital Assistant.
30:32
Speaker 3: We have lots of other features but that I can
30:37
Speaker 3: go into and I encourage anyone.
30:39
Speaker 2: Interested to check out.
30:41
Speaker 3: But everything we do is to support clinicians and providing
30:44
Speaker 3: better care for their clients.
30:46
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, all right, So how do people learn more
30:49
Speaker 1: about Novo Psych and what you folks are offering.
30:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, check out novo psych dot com and o v
30:56
Speaker 3: ops y cch dot com. We also have a landing
30:59
Speaker 3: page specifically for your listeners at Novo psych dot com
31:03
Speaker 3: slash Trauma Podcast, and if you go there, you'll get
31:06
Speaker 3: a nice overview of how it works and some great
31:10
Speaker 3: measures that you can check out that we found our
31:14
Speaker 3: especially especially useful for trauma therapists. So you can also
31:19
Speaker 3: reach out by email at info at Novo psych dot com.
31:23
Speaker 3: Also welcome to contact me directly. I love talking about
31:26
Speaker 3: all of this and helping clinicians incorporate it into their work.
31:30
Speaker 1: All right, awesome, Hila, Thank you so much. We'll have
31:33
Speaker 1: all that link up here at the show notes page
31:35
Speaker 1: at the Trauma Therapist podcast dot com. Once again, that's
31:38
Speaker 1: Novo psych dot com slash Trauma Podcast. Thank you so
31:42
Speaker 1: much for being here.
31:43
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, guy.
31:44
Speaker 1: All right, take care.
31:45
Speaker 3: Hi,