The reality is that supervising interns and provisional counselors opens the door for liability issues.
The other reality is that you do not know what is going on in session with your supervisees every second of each hour; you only know what they tell you. The best you can do as a supervisor and/or employer is to train them well in order to mitigate one of the largest targets that is on your back, malpractice lawsuits.
New therapists are bright eyed and busy tailed, focusing on all the good they set out to do as a therapist.
They forget and don’t even realize that anyone who walks through the door, no matter how nice, could be the malpractice suit that teaches them the hard lessons of being in the healthcare industry.
As a counselor supervisor you take on the liability for them, that means it is your rear end on the line. In order to CYA while they are conducting therapy sessions and you can’t guide their every movement, train them! Give them checklists on every protocol important to your state and practice. This way you have done your due diligence and the risk of a claim by a client lowers significantly.
Most people have gone to therapy and understand the rules of engagement with a therapist, so it can be tempting for any therapist to skip over the informed consent portion of the first session. Newbies may also be shy to verbally disclose their experience status. It only takes one disgruntled client to ruin your day, actually, it can takes years for the most simple cases to be settled outside of court, and, they will win.
Practice informed consent with your new clinicians in role play together or in group supervision.
This will give you a chance to see how they do and desensitize them from being nervous about it.
Below you will find a checklist that is handy for a intern or provisional licensed therapist to have.
It can even be laminated nd they can keep it on hand somewhere in their bag or in the office. As a second line of defense, in your informed consent document you can have clients pick their assigned therapist from the dropdown box that forces them to see who their therapist is and what their licensure designation is. This way, they are informed on the phone, in the documentation AND verbally at their first appointment.
If you do all of this and a client still tried to claim that they didn’t understand something about informed consent you will be able to say with confidence that you know they are mistaken due to the many layers of protection you have provided yourself.