Seminars

A 75-90 minute seminar will be held every week of the academic year. The seminar will be run by the same faculty member throughout each semester. You are expected to read the required readings prior to attending the seminar and then contribute to the discussion. On occasion, you will be required to lead the discussion of the seminar. The purpose of these seminars is to develop your understanding of relevant therapeutic factors within a peer discussion context.

Supervision

During academic semester, you will receive supervision from a senior clinician within our faculty. When possible, you will play audio recordings to their supervisor and discuss their current therapeutic progress. In some instances, recording of therapy sessions may not be possible due to WSLHD policy. In these cases, you are expected to take detailed progress notes. Together you will formulate the ongoing therapeutic plan for to be implemented with your patient. Supervision is a collaborative exercise between supervisor and therapist (and sometimes their peers), in response to the patient’s therapeutic needs. The facilitation of the therapist’s personal style is enhanced and enabled consequently allowing the therapist/patient relationship to develop thus affording therapeutic progress.

The supervision sessions will be conducted in small groups with two or three other trainees within the Westmead Psychotherapy Program. Consequently, the trainees are afforded the opportunity to learn from their peers who may have been exposed to different therapeutic presentations/challenges. Additionally, the trainees can use their supervision time to obtain advice and feedback on their assessments that need to be submitted.

Attendance

It is expected of you to attend at least 90% of the seminars and supervision sessions conducted by the Westmead Psychotherapy program. You should contact your supervisor if you are unable to attend. Whilst a doctor’s certificate is not required for absences, they would be considered if the required 90% attendance rate is not maintained.

Practical Clinical Therapy

You will be expected to conduct long-term psychotherapy with suitable patients that have been referred to and assessed by the Westmead Psychotherapy program. More detailed information can be found in the section ‘Long-term Psychotherapy with Patients’.

Presentation

You will be required to do a 30 minute presentation to present the main points of the student’s Treatise for discussion. 

Conversational Model Therapy Adherence Scale (CoMTAS)

As part of the therapist’s training in psychotherapy using the Conversational Model, you will be required to complete the Conversational Model Therapy Adherence Scale (CoMTAS: Appendix B). The CoMTAS is intended for self-reflection and is conducted on random sample of a few minutes of audio/video recorded therapy somewhere in the middle of the therapy session. More information on the CMAS can be found on page 291 of Borderline Personality Disorder and the Conversational Model: A Clinician’s Manual (Meares et al., 2012). WPP research on the utility of the CoMTAS have recently been published (Halovic et al. 2018a; 2018b; 2018c)

There are two main reasons for ensuring that the psychotherapists are utilising the Conversational Model in their therapy sessions. Firstly and perhaps most importantly, we need to be able to draw meaningful conclusions that therapeutic outcome of the patients in our program is attributable to psychotherapy utilising the Conversational Model. Therefore, it is essential to measure the therapists’ adherence to the Conversational Model in their therapy sessions.

Secondly, trainee psychotherapists need to develop an understanding of the Conversational Model. This understanding will be facilitated by relatively routine CoMTAS ratings made in relation to a recorded segment of a therapy session. It is considered this process will consolidate a sense of self awareness in relation to application of Conversational Model Therapy in a reflective practice.