Ways to Improve Your Therapy Practice: Get Better Client Results

You want to see your clients progress and succeed. Helping others reach their potential is a big part of why you choose to be a therapist every day. So, how can you get more clients to stay motivated and reach their potential? One way is to help them see some positive changes early.

Let’s take a look at some ways you can improve client outcomes, which will lead to your clients praising you and your practice.

Set your clients up for success

There is a lot of anxiety when a client comes in your door. People dealing with sensitivities can feed off of the energy in the room: family, new surroundings and new people. Sensitive people can sense – and even align with – the energy in the room: Are other kids happy being there? Is this place kid friendly? Is there a quiet place to go?

Your first step is to address these anxieties and bring a calm, safe feeling to everyone visiting your space. You might suggest a new client bring something familiar from home along with them. There are many tools you can use from unusual toys, challenging games, and therapeutic tools that look like fun to engage children. Like the Dreampad. In your waiting room, where several children come and go throughout the day, you could have the child sit on the Dreampad. It is new, different and they will get some input to the body. Ideally, the Dreampad would be used at home to help them fall asleep and stay asleep. But, what a fun way to get acclimated with such a good association!

As you start developing a care plan for your client, emotional security is one of the first issues to address, as their ability to feel secure affects their availability to your therapy. Bringing your clients’ physiological state to a manageable level is key to opening the door to success.

Fun activities

Let’s face it. If your client isn’t enjoying therapy, they will stop coming. After all, the battle to get them in the car added to the drive across town has to be worth it. If you’re working with pediatric clients, parents will want to know they’re child is enjoying therapy. But most of what you do looks like play. We’ve all heard it. This looks like play – why are we paying for this? We could do this at home! It makes every pediatric therapist cringe. What is the difference? What you do works! Their play at home isn’t working. If it were, they wouldn’t be seeing you. But, it sometimes put pressure on you to show results.

The key to enjoying the work is to make it fun!  When kids feel like they are playing, the work is easy and enjoyable and everyone involved is more likely to be engaged.  Use the following resources to increase the fun factor in your clinic!

There are a number of fun therapy ideas from xyz online. Here are some great resources:

• Therapeutic Games and Activities – Games for Groups
• 10 Therapist (and Child)-Approved Activities to Support Kids with Anxiety
• 400 Therapist-Approved Activities for Kids

Get results! Focus System programs consist of therapeutically-treated music combined with fun movement activities, and, when ready, cognitive challenges to further activate brain networks. Strapped around the waist, leaving arms and legs free, the flexibility of 60-minute or 30-minute versions of the programs, which target specific goals, make implementation easy for you to add to your therapeutic intervention in the clinic.

Results

Your clients need to know that therapy is working. Because you may only see your client once a week, and because progress can be gradual, it can be difficult to always see the big picture.  That’s why it’s important to document progress all along the way.

As you know, it’s essential that you use pre and post tests to measure your clients’ abilities before and after therapy.

Create charts and graphs to illustrate your test results. They’re much easier for your clients and client families to digest in follow up meetings.

While numbers and graphs are great for illustrating success, nothing compares to video. Can we say that again? Nothing compares to video!

Even simple iPhone videos are a great way for you to illustrate changes and improvements to your clients and client families.

Start by identifying an area of improvement to target with your clients. Then record your client performing the task for 15-30 seconds every few visits. Keep track of each client’s videos by saving and dating them in designated folders. When sessions are complete, compile the videos and share areas where your client progressed or saw changes during therapy.

Don’t be afraid to ask your client families for help getting videos – especially if they are performing therapy at home. It’s a great way to maintain engagement and show progress.

Get more tips on capturing client video here.

Some clients may be willing to share their videos with you for promotional purposes. In that case, you’ll want to have them sign a video release form (sample here) granting permission for you to use the video. In fact, this is a great place to start with all your clients and client families when they are beginning therapy and completing paperwork.