The novice, the apprentice, the trainee, the student, the underdog, the intern – these are all names for newbies in various fields of work. It’s normal to worry about whether they have enough knowledge and/or experience to take clients, patients, or customers under their wing. In the world of counseling, though, you can absolutely trust being, or putting your child, in the hands of an intern. Here’s why…
Current Availability
One of the bigger benefits to working with interns is the open availability and ability to take on clients right away. So many therapists are booked full, and clinics are having to put people on wait-lists because the demand is larger than the supply. Depending on the clinic, the list can leave people waiting anywhere between a few weeks to several months. By choosing to work with an intern, you can expect to receive support and services within a week or two.
Less Clients Means More Focus on You
Interns have smaller caseloads than limited or fully licensed therapists. This is helpful because interns can focus on giving the best services to the clients they do have. With that, they can do more planning and prepping between sessions, more research tailored to their client’s treatment and needs, and gain more supervision over those cases.
Extra Supervision
While counseling interns keep your information as confidential as possible, there’s a benefit of them talking about their cases with a fully-licensed supervising therapist. The best way to think of an intern is two therapist brains in one voice. The feedback interns receive from their supervisors will inevitably help them provide better skills, services, and support to their clients.
More Current Training
Given that interns are finishing up their degrees and likely studying for their licensing exam, they tend to be more familiar with recent research and evidence-based practices in the field. Many mental health licenses don’t require clinicians to seek continuing education credits to maintain their licensure, and while counselors tend to be self-motivated to do their own research and stay up-to-date with best practices, it’s not necessarily promised. With an intern (and a supervisor to help back-up or fine-tune their ideas), you don’t need to worry about that!
Less Assumptions and Eagerness to Try New Things
When a clinician has seen, heard, and experienced the same stories, behaviors, reactions, and conversations, they create patterns on how they navigate those situations. They tend to work off preconceived notions based on their past experiences. This is certainly not a bad thing, but sometimes it can lead to missed details or unique piece(s) of the story that get overlooked. Interns don’t really have assumptions or expectations to work from. Instead, their curiosity and eagerness to learn more pushes them to ask more questions, do more research, and talk to their supervisors for more ideas around their clients treatment. Not to mention, they have new techniques, skills, and knowledge they’re enthusiastic about sharing and testing out with their clients. That willingness and flexibility to keep finding what’s going to work for their clients is unmatched.
Allow Them to Grow with You
Interns take great pride and responsibility in their first clients because those initial experiences are so valuable to them. Knowing someone is giving them, the newbie, a chance to provide a great service often means they’re willing to do as much as it takes to help and support their clients as best as they can.
If you’re interested in working with an intern, visit our Meet Our Therapists page to learn more about current interns who are ready to take you under their wing!