But I’m licensed!

So the recession is officially making its way into San Francisco community mental health. Once receiving my professional license, I figured that employment would be easy to find and secure, while developing my private practice on the side.

As a result, I’ve exercised patience over the past few months in seeking employment, waiting for the employer that felt like a good match to come my way in combination of population of clients, professionalism of the organization and of course salary. Because of this, I’ve stuck with my current employer, Walden House, despite it being time to move on, because I have been there for many years, know how things run and enjoy working with my clients.

However, the economic downturn has made its way into San Francisco’s Department of Public health as both the city and California fear huge annual deficits for the year. The SF-DPH will be cutting $26.7M, with over $.5M of those cuts affecting Walden House.

So I’m out of a job come January 1, 2009, after all of this time expecting things to be easy once I reached this stage of my career. Goes to show that you never know. I’m searching far and wide and am less picky than I have been for the past few months. We’ll see what comes my way. Hopefully my license can open up a few doors for me in these challenging times.

[above: the back of my new business cards!]

So today my new business cards arrived! I’m really excited. They say “Licensed Psychologist” on them, how could I not be.

I’m not the most traditional psychologist out there, so in putting together my business cards, I decided to take some risks and show that off in the style of the card (see image above). I also decided that i needed to make cards that are those hip new “skinny” business cards. Also, they’re green, not white. I can’t show you the front, but all I decided to put on there way my name, title, phone number, email addy and license number.

I’m not sure how my approach to business cards will turn out. I’ll guess I’ll end up getting boring cards if it seems be working against me down the road.

Below are the first things (well, at least profession-oriented) things that I officially became a License Psychologist. Who knows if this is the best order or if I’m missing anything. During some professional transition phases mentorship is highly valuable. This seems to be one of those phases.

1) Get new business cards
2) Learn about malpractice insurance and sign up for it
3) Learn more about HMO panels and apply
4) Examine new employment opportunities
5) Take Clinical Supervision class (online)
4) Find private practice location
5) Take next steps into private practice entrepreneurship

So that’s my list in no particular order (of course some things are better to do before others). #5 is my biggest challenge. I’ll be discussing that more here in the weeks and months to come.

So I’ve never been in a fraternity (and to clarify, nor have I ever wanted to be in one) but as a friend has pointed out, going through the licensing process is largely like being hazed into the greek system back in college. I guess this isn’t only for psychologists/therapists, but for most professionals who have governing institutions and license procedures. One may argue that there is some level of testing competency involved in the EPPP and CPSE testing process, but from my point of view, its mostly a test of determination, test-taking ability and ego strength, and not so much a test of knowledge and skill. Much of that material I learned through the studying process. I’m grateful for the odd psych-trivia I now have embedded in the depths of my memory reserves, but I’m not sure how useful it is. I’m a big fan of the internet, journals and books as sources of information, and could see clinicians using these resources rather than cramming (and probably not retaining) a bunch of useful (and largely useless) information into their heads when they could be learning about applied clinical psychology best practices.

But, regardless of how both silly and important that test of stamina and determination can be, I’m now in the club. Being in the club gives you access to all sorts of great things – you can practice psychology on your own, you qualify for all those jobs that say “licensed” in the listings, you can ask for higher salary, you can supervise interns (once you take the supervision CE class) and most of all, you are recognized by the elder members as one of the ones who has made it through all the hoops.

It feels really good reaching this milestone and sharing this space with all the other psychologists who have reached this place. Now we’re finally colleagues. Its not like this is close to the end of the road. There are so many more challenges to take on and things to learn and grow from. Now I can take them on with a new sense of pride and sense of belonging.

Now, I’m eagerly waiting to be assigned my license number!

After one month of constant studying (thanks to Quia for its help with its good study guide, practice exams, lessons on cd, etc) and feeling really confident I scheduled my CPSE last week for today, Friday Aug 29, 2008.

This morning, I woke up at 6am and drove down to Santa Clara. For some unknown reason, the CA Board of Psychology doesn’t contract with a test giver that has an office in San Francisco, Oakland or Berkeley, so I had to make the 1hr journey down into the Peninsula during morning rush hour.

And at 11:30am this morning, I completed my exam and passed the California Psychology Supplemental Exam (CPSE).
I rushed home, completed the application, paid the licensing fee, stuffed it into an envelope and rushed it to the post office.
Of course, the BoP doesn’t have a straightforward process, but I’m pretty sure everything is complete with the “T”’s crossed and “I”’s dotted as wished.
$400 isn’t really something I can afford right now, but the investment is so worth it.

What a relief! The final major obstacle to getting my Psychologist License is complete.

Next up, I’ll do a little analysis of this whole initial licensing processes. And I can’t see what’s next around the corner.

I just stumbled on a website created by Dr. Raymond Lloyd Richmond, a fellow psychologist here in the Bay Area. It’s pretty comprehensive, and seems good for both clinicians and clients. I think the most noteworthy section is on how to become a psychologist.

Yesterday I got my letter from the EPPP and I passed! Wa-hoo!

Now that I passed, I’m comfortable writing about it. It was really challenging and I didn’t confident that I passed either while i was taking the exam or when I left. Many of the questions I had never seen before and I had to just use deductive reasoning to try and find the best answer. I also changed probably 10% of my answers when I went back through the exam. Thank god I took many practice exams and studied through a study guide. Probably 10% of the material on the test I only knew because of the study guide. I’m also really surprised that the scores came back so quick. Supposedly they only report scores twice a month. I must have gotten lucky and ended up on the right side of the mid-month cutoff.

Next up is the California Psychology Supplemental Examination (CPSE)

This looks like it might be helpful in studying for it:
http://www.quia.com/pages/cpsepretest.html

I’m really trying to avoid spending a few hundred on a course, but that may be necessary. Although the information is all very relevant to practicing psychotherapy (unlike the EPPP), the questions are pretty tricky.

I can’t wait for all this to be over with.

Yesterday I finally took the Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP). I’d been studying since October (with a 3 month break for traveling) and am crossing my fingers that I passed and can move towards the next step towards getting license.

To everyone who is curious how I did, my only reply is that it is so difficult to tell. There are 225 questions on the exam, 25 of them don’t count (they are test questions) and I need to get about 150 of the remaining 200 correct to pass (the questions are weighted). When I went into studying for the exam, I was totally amazed about the amount of material that I was needing to teach myself for the first time. Over the past few months I ended up mastering all that information (this test is on ALL of Clinical Psychology, not just therapy which in my opinion is ridiculous). But when I went into yesterday’s examination, I was once again surprised about how many questions contained terms and theories that I had never come across in my schooling, in my study manual or in the practice exams I had taken.

So fingers are crossed. Scores get reported twice a month, so I’ll know pretty soon what my next steps are. In the meantime, I’m reviewing what hoops still remain. Below are two great articles from the APA that are a godsend on how to stay organized with all this stuff.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug06/license.html
http://gradpsych.apags.org/sep07/internship.html

The Bay Area is a small place, sometimes resembling a small town. Its virtually impossible to go anywhere and not run into someone you know or at least recognizes you as a friend of a friend. So being a Clinical Psychologist here isn’t easy when trying to avoid dual relationships with clients. One reason why this blog is anonymous is to prevent myself from having a dual relationship here with current or potential clients. Having professional boundaries is one of the keys to a healthy therapeutic relationship in which most growth can happen for the client.

Awareness of the challenges of maintaining a professional stance when encountering dual relationships are very present here. The networking process is often through friends or social/professional networking sites, and colleagues who easily become friends outside of the workplace. Therefore as a clinician, you’re lucky if you clients are more than two degrees of separation away from your personal life. And the more social you and our clients are, the closer they are going to be to entering your social circle.

For example, one of my private practice clients and I got connected through a online networking site that my friends and I use mostly for social purposes. I never met this person before, nor did it seem like any of my friends were connected to him through the site. But knowing very well of how quickly circles begin to overlap here, our second session was completely devoted to discussing the inevitable time when we will run into each other in the park, at a concert or festival. How will it go down when it happens? We’re not quite sure, however, I believe having this conversation before we’re caught off guard in an awkward encounter, will strengthen our relationship and allow the client to grow through the process.

building a private practice isn’t the only way to have a self determined career in clinical psychology. i’m finding that there are opportunities for creating employment opportunities where one wouldn’t think they exist. this requires the same mentality as creating one’s own practice – i am of value to people and organizations.

one thing that i’ve learned is that my cover letter really needs to be about me. not about how great of a clinical psychologist i am, but how great of a person i am in relation to this thing that i do called clinical psychology. my hope is that these communications to prospective employers and organizations will at least catch their attention. it also gives me the belief that if they are interested in who i am, then there is likely to be a better match, than if i just pitched myself in a generic way and they chose to hire me.

so as a (partial) result of these tactics, i find myself part time employed at my old organization. i proposed to my old program manager, that i was looking for work and perhaps could offer my services to the organization, on a part time, temporary, flexible hour, assistant manager type basis. lucky for me, i have a set of skills that they need desperately (i’m the veteran member of the team by a longshot) and he accepted. so happily, i have a stronger resume and plenty of choice in this new position. i’ll not only be seeing clients for therapy, but also training new hires and building the program up so that there’s a structure to support it when i choose to move on.

the next step is create the next opportunity that will replace this one, that will excite me enough to move on.