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Setting Up a Private Practice As a Clinical Psychologist
It is the clinician's responsibility to create and arrange a space where his patients would be able to best benefit from their treatment, feeling that their needs are being taken care of and their confidentiality protected as the clinician's main concern.
Hiring staffAll the clerical staff coming into personal contact with the patients can either help or damage the relationship with the patient (Blau, 1988). Also, the staff would have the best opportunity for invading the patients' privacy by getting access to the patients' filed, etc. The staff must be initially selected with these potential problems in mind.
Applicants planning to stay for a longer term should be preferred. This would not only save time and inconvenience involved with training new staff, but help protect the patients' confidentiality - the smaller number of people is involved with the patients' cases overtime, the more confidential their cases are.
References must be checked thoroughly. The therapist should look for someone who is intelligent, has good judgment, a pleasant and an open manner of communication, and good skills in avoiding conflict (Blau, 1988). Some qualities can be found, others will need to be trained.
The hired staff should be expected to both treat the patients with respect and friendliness and keep a certain psychological distance. Informal discussion of patients should be forbidden. The therapist needs to provide the information necessary for billing or appointment scheduling to the clerical staff in separate files, while the patients' file cabinet should never be available for the staff to access, as it would destroy the confidentiality of the patient (Blau, 1988).
Cleaning staff
Cleaning staff may seem not to be of much importance, but these would still be the people (or the person) who have access to the office and, potentially, the confidential information kept in it. Except for doing a thorough reference check, there is not much that the therapist can do in order to protect his patients' privacy here. With this in mind, nobody without two or more clearly trustworthy references should be hired and all the confidential information in the office should be locked up well.
Continued here: Setting Up A Private Practice: Storing Files
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