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    • Information for Therapists

    Are you interested in:

    1. Accessing free, cutting-edge evidence-based professional development designed for busy clinicians?
    2. Improving your working relationships with patients?
    3. Improving your ability to recognize and avoid microaggressions and repair them should they happen?
    If you are a registered mental health provider in Canada who delivers psychotherapy as part of your scope of practice and you want to learn more about participating, then watch the video, read below, and contact us.
    *All career stages and therapeutic modalities are welcome, but enrolment is limited to the first 156 eligible therapists on a first come first served basis.

    Therapist Information Video

    Goals of the study

    1. To test a professional development program to improve therapist skills in maintaining a therapeutic alliance, identifying microaggressions, and repairing alliance ruptures
    2. To improve mental health outcomes for all patients

    Interested in participating or learning more?

    Click here to ask the study team for more information

    click here to access a survery to see if you qualify for the study

    What’s my role in the study

    1. Invite new patients from your existing practice to participate in the study by sharing study information with new patients.
      • Complete a self-paced virtual course covering attachment, interpersonal style, patient diversity, trauma, mentalizing, managing therapeutic alliance ruptures, managing microaggressions

        • Click here to learn more about the course


      • Participate in bi-weekly consultation sessions with facilitators and therapist peers to facilitate using the course content in your practice
    2. Enroll a minimum of 3 patients in the study
    3. Respond to questionnaires about yourself and your practice at the beginning and end of participation and participate in an exit interview
    4. Respond to questionnaires about therapy with your patient after 6 sessions of therapy
    5. Agree to engage in 6 sessions of therapy with each enrolled patient on a secure, virtual mental health care platform employed by the study
    6. Allow us to collect audio recordings of the 6 study therapy sessions

    What do I gain from participating in the study?

    1. You gain access to free professional development training and consultations with course facilitators.
    2. You will learn new skills in developing and maintaining the therapeutic alliance, repairing alliance ruptures including those related to microaggressions
    3. You will contribute to cutting edge research on mental health treatment
    4. Your training may improve outcomes for your patients
    5. You will be compensated for your time spent completing study surveys
      6. *If you want, we can include you on a list of therapists accepting new patients for the study. You are not required to accept any patient enrolled in the study and you will discuss therapy with these patients including fees based on your usual practice

    Am I eligible to participate?

    1. You are a provincially regulated health professional in Canada, and your scope of practice includes individual psychotherapy for adults in Canada in English
    2. You agree to conduct 6 consecutive therapy sessions with enrolled patients via the study's secure, PHIPA compliant virtual meeting platform
    3. You agree that your 6 study sessions with enrolled patients will be audio recorded
    4. You can take on 3-6 new patients in your practice who will participate in this study over a 1-year period
    5. Agree to provide study information to new patients in your practice

    Frequently Asked Questions

    1. How much time will the virtual course take to complete?
        You can complete the course at your own pace. Based on a test learner group, the average time to complete the course was 15 hours, completed over 4-6 weeks.
    2. How much time will I need to complete questionnaires after sessions?
        Post session questionnaires will take approximately 5 minutes. Slightly longer questionnaires will be used before the first and after the last of 6 study sessions with each patient.
    3. Why do you need to audio record therapy sessions?
        Audio recordings are important because they allow the research team to independently assess features of therapy that are difficult to confirm with self assessment questionnaires.
    4. Will the audio recording be a distraction in therapy?
        Usually not. Recording is integrated into the virtual platform, typically does not interfere with sessions, and is usually forgotten once the session gets started.
    5. Can I participate with patients who attend only in person?
        No. We are only able to include virtual sessions.
    6. What if after I enroll, I change my mind, and I’m not comfortable continuing with the study?
        You can withdraw your participation at any time. We encourage you to discuss any concerns about participation with the study team.
    7. Will I be compensated?
        We value the contributions participants make, and we will compensate you based on time spent to complete surveys.
    8. What if I work for an organization?
        We will work with you and your organization to determine if the study is a good fit and obtain approval for your participation. Sometimes this may involve submitting an ethics application to your organization’s ethics board, and we can coordinate this.
    9. Can confidentiality be assured?
        Yes. There are multiple safeguards to protect data:

        • End to end encryption of data transfer
        • Data storage on secure, encrypted and password protected, Canadian based servers
        • Information and data are stored separately so that they cannot be easily linked
        • Transcripts from audio recordings will be de-identified
        • Only the research team can access study data and only for specific research purposes that are approved by the research ethics oversight board