Introduction
Welcome
to the Home Study Course entitled "Balancing the Power Dynamic in the Therapeutic
Relationship" sponsored by the Healthcare Training Institute. Our primary
intent for this course is to provide quality education to foster your professional
growth. The Institute has provided quality education since 1979 to thousands nationally
and in Canada as well. My name is Tracy Catherine Appleton.
We
appreciate the fact you have chosen us as a vehicle for you to earn your Continuing
Education Credit. I will be the narrator of this CD. Two co-authors of this course
are Jill Daniels and Janel Brush. Jill has community mental health experience,
and Janel has been in private practice focusing on marriage counseling.
Let's
talk about the format of this CD. For the purpose of brevity most generally I
will use the term therapist or mental health professional. However, don't let
these terms deter you from applying the concepts to your situations. When you
hear the term therapist, if your job title is social worker, marriage and family
therapist, psychologist, mental health counselor, resident director, team leader,
etc., merely substitute the appropriate term or title that is the most meaningful
to you. Also, for the purposes of brevity, I will use the term client. However,
transpose this term to the one that is the most meaningful for those you treat,
whether it be consumer, patient, resident, etc. The key is not to let my use of
these shorthand terms turn you off from the ideas presented by saying, "This
doesn't apply to me -- I am a resident assistant or a therapist and I deal with
patients, not clients."
Also,
regarding completion of your Answer Booklet, periodically questions are asked
regarding the content to which you have just listened. These questions correspond
with the questions in your Answer Booklet. Merely write the correct letter in
the blank next to the question. There is nothing tricky or hard about these questions.
They are merely intended to verify your playing of this CD. Each question is included
on this CD as well as in the Answer Booklet and sequentially deals with the section
that precedes it. For this reason, to facilitate the answering of each question,
you might read a question prior to listening to that section. By knowing what
the question is ahead of time, you will then know the content to listen for that
contains the answer. So if you have the Answer Booklet handy now, it might be
a good idea to read question one and listen for the answer in this next session.
The
purpose of the course is to assist you in increasing your self awareness regarding
balancing the power dynamic with clients. You will get out of it what you put
into it. I challenge you to remold, reshape, and re-examine the information presented
to find the gem that will be of value to you for current or future reference.
And as you know, balancing power in therapeutic relationships is a continual challenge.
You will note the Manual that accompanies this home study course touches on a
very wide range of aspects of the client/therapist's relationship. The content
of the Manual includes: Empowerment, Professional Codes of Ethics, and CounterTransference.
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