388: The Digital Counselling Room

So starting us off, ethical sustainable practice, the digital counseling room.

You know, I'm just thinking back.

Yeah, so during training, confidentiality, you know, you'd contract it, and you'd have your notes in a, in a, in a, in a filing cabinet and...

But when you were looking at your, your, your room you'd say, "Is the door thick enough? Can anybody hear from the door? Is there a window that somebody can see in?"

Mm.

"Is it, at the entrance can s- people coming, s- s- uh, see somebody coming in?" And I guess we've got different things to consider now that we live in a very digital world, and I know that, uh, from the, um, the polls that are done by our professional bodies that so many therapists, a massive, uh, percentage of therapies now offer a blended counseling, which is kind of-

Yeah

...

some in face-to-face, but m- maybe some online or via the phone, Rory.

What, what do we need to consider for our digital counseling room?

Well, I think I'll pick up on your points about when we, when we were in training we, we both taught, and setting up your counseling room was usually, as you say, about having a quiet space, maybe, um, you know, making it inviting, comfy chairs.

Um, you know, maybe a, a table and some tissues if, if a client got overwhelmed.

And, you know, we'd do a lesson on the 1999 Data Protection Act, and, and that was it.

We all, we, we all went off, got a cup of tea, and, and that was all we needed to know back then.

But the world has turned, and it... we now live in a connected digital age.

And, you know, people have laptop computers, cloud services, emails.

They may have practice management systems or video platforms.

And that's working face to face.

I'm not talking about people who may decide to have a blended practice where they work online and then they work face to face.

And the, I guess it gives you the question, is my filing cabinet locked? To go back to those wonderful days when we taught, we used to say, "Get yourse- get yourself a lockbox, and you keep the key, and you put your d- your, your information in and make sure it's locked." Um, you know, y- y- almost feels, um, a little naive thinking back to those [laughs] days, Ken.

Yeah.

Because now, um, there are just so many areas where client information can live.

And I'm, I'll just give you a, a, a short list.

So email, you know, telephone numbers on your mobile phone, text messages, appointment calendars, notes, assessments, contracts, um, invoices, video platform, cloud backups, and, you know, as we've talked about, AI transcription tools, which, uh, I think, uh, will, will or could lead- Um, therapists into [clears throat] a very dangerous and murky area if those are used without any form of, of thought or due diligence.

So I guess a useful exercise is to imagine following a client through one of their digital systems.